Best stories are sometimes not accompanied by the biggest headlines

I’ve written before, how the most interesting news in the paper isn’t necessarily the biggest news, and are often the smaller items tucked away inside a newspaper.

Some recent items I thought interesting, but not necessarily big news were:

• A story out of London reported how a rare Picasso painting was found in a bedroom, next to two other “important” works.

The two other paintings were by lesser known, but apparently well respected British artists, George Stubbs and Alfred Munnings. “To find just one of these works would have been incredible, but to find three was quite exceptional,” the Associated Press reported.

Trouble was, the small story I saw didn’t tell us about the house in which the paintings were found.

Was this found in a bedroom in some castle owned by the Earl of Whatnot or the Duchess of Something? The discovery would still be significant, but a bit easier to understand.

It’d be even more amazing if you found a Picasso and two other significant works in a regular guy’s bedroom, say like mine. My wife Gladys has hung some pictures on our bedroom walls, but I’m pretty confident none are works significant enough to end up in any news stories.

 • I’ve read about efforts in the state Legislature to address problems of discipline in our public schools. A story out of Delta, Colo., told of a teacher who had a novel concept for disciplining an uncooperative student.

The AP reported how the high school English teacher punished a tardy student by ordering him to do push-ups and sit-ups, and then later let other students hit the guy when he failed to complete his assigned exercises.

The teacher had given the student a certain amount of time to complete his push-ups or sit-ups, and when he didn’t, fellow students were allowed to hit him, a police spokesman said.

Police are investigating and the teacher faces possible abuse charges.

Let’s see...a beating for not completing your tardy punishment assignment. What do you if someone fails the LEAP test...let the other students stone him?

This could really to cut down on classroom disruption and motivate students to improve test scores.

• Talk about a boring movie, the AP reported how a New Zealand man fell asleep in a local movie theater, there with his wife to see a “chick flick.”

She was griped that he kept falling asleep so she left him there, still sleeping, when the movie was over. But when she realized at 3 a.m. he still wasn’t home, she called him on his cell phone.

 It turned out he was still asleep in the movie theater ... closed after employees failed to notice the guy sleeping in one of the seats.

 When he woke up and tried to exit, a motion alarm in the theater triggered, police responded, and the story of how this chick flick put the guy to sleep hit the news.

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From something the folks at Process Printers sent:

• The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

WILL CHAPMAN is publisher of The Daily Iberian.