Big show announced

Readers of GoTriad and GoTriad.com found out today that country star Kenny Chesney will be playing a tsunami benefit concert Saturday night at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem.

The show was just announced today - in print, online and on radio.

Here's a look behind the scenes:

We were told about the show on a confidential/embargoed basis a couple of weeks ago, so that we could prepare any appropriate newspaper space to announce it.

We were asked not to let the information out until today, Thursday. The plan was/is to have the show announced Thursday, tickets go on sale Friday and the show is on Saturday.

Supposedly, Chesney is only doing about six of these shows around the country, and picked Ziggy's as one of those spots.

Why didn't we let people know ahead of time? It's just because they said it's embargoed? Yes, it is.

A good part of the newspaper business is about trust. Not only do readers have to trust that what they find in the paper is true, but we also want sources and the community to trust us to hold information, and print it correctly.

In this case, it was - I trust you to not tell this information, in exchange for me giving you advance notice about it.

We tried our best to get an interview with Chesney, but he's not doing interviews to promote these shows.

So... that's a little look behind the scenes of a rare breaking news concert announcement.

In 99 cases out of 100, this doesn't happen. The newspaper finds out and announces shows as soon as we hear them (when the information is not embargoed).

In the case of Chesney, this is a big-name concert playing a small venue for a small price. At $10 a ticket, and a limit of 2, the show is sure to sell out in high demand.

Anyone interested in the show can go to Ziggy's Web site at www.ziggyrock.com.