As a newspaper editor, I have a different take -- for everything, there is a (news) cycle.

Not so long ago, The Associated Press adhered to two cycles -- AM and PM. Stories for morning newspapers included AM in the naming structure. Those for afternoon papers -- when there were plenty of afternoon papers in blue-collar communities -- included PM in their names.

As cable news and the Internet prospered, the concept of the 24-hour news cycle caused journalists to rethink the antiquated nomenclature. The Associated Press replaced AM and PM with BC for both cycles. I have never understood why BC is needed if stories are delivered for use at any time of day.

All this brings me to last week. Wednesday's edition of The Frederick News-Post was on the press and I was home waiting to hear from my wife who was in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with her closest friend and Bruce Springsteen. I told her to call me when they got to where she would be staying -- about two hours from the concert site -- that I would be awake.

As I was waiting, cable news broke with the alert that Ted Kennedy was dead after his 15-month battle with brain cancer. I looked at my watch and saw it was about 1:15 a.m. I thought for a minute about anything I could do to get a bulletin in that day's paper, but realized the press was humming and would be finished before I could get anything together.

My wife called to tell me she and her friend were off the road for the night and I told her the news. She was tired and told me she'd call in the morning.

Before calling me she picked up a newspaper in the Hudson Valley, expecting to see the Kennedy story. I told her the story broke too late to get into the print edition, meaning newspapers across the East Coast were posting stories to their websites as new details emerged.

Most readers of The Boston Globe, on the other hand, did not have to turn to the web or cable news for the story. Realizing the magnitude of this story in Massachusetts, editors stopped the press to change the front page for the last two editions.

On Wednesday, editors here discussed how to play the story. We figured it should play on the front page because of the significance of his career and his family. Early on, reporters sought out local connections to the senator so we could give our readers something they would not find elsewhere. That story was packaged with the main national story from The Associated Press.

As the days went on, we moved our coverage to inside pages. We realized the story was being covered on TV and the web so we would not be breaking news, but the story should be told in print.

I was reminded of cleaning out my mother's house after she died last year -- finding newspapers from the days after the assassinations of Kennedy's brothers John and Robert. I wonder if people are adding these papers to similar collections.