At the height of his power, during the days of Watergate, former Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee’s nickname for his newspaper became part of the popular culture.

The Daily Miracle, he called his newspaper — a keen recognition that so many elements are at play during the production of a daily newspaper that it’s a miracle every day that the newspaper even gets out to the readers.

I was reminded of Brad-lee’s moniker for his newspaper after Sunday morning, when I picked up a copy of the Waco Tribune-Herald and got my first glance at our Brazos Living section.

The same miracle that sustains daily newspapers across the country fell short for the Trib on this day.

There staring at me was an image of George Washington sporting a pair of fangs. And lower on the page were similar images of our Founding Fathers depicted as vampires — all prominently displayed in our newspaper on July 4, of all days.

I was immediately heartsick at seeing these images because I knew instantly that tens of thousands of readers across Central Texas would be viewing the same images of these iconic figures being disparaged on the pages of the newspaper that I have the honor of helping to manage.

And I knew immediately that these same readers would react with fury. And that they had every right to react that way.

As you can see from our Letters to the Editor today, the readers indeed reacted — with scorn, with shock and with genuine fury that we would depict these great men in this manner. To depict these men as such would have been offensive on any day, but to do so on our nation’s birthday went beyond the pale, our readers made clear.

While we have room to publish merely a handful of these letters of outrage, let me assure you there are dozens more just like the ones we published, all expressing the same sentiments regarding our treatment of the Founding Fathers.

To all of these letter-writers, to all of our valued readers, to all of the citizens of Central Texas: I apologize.

I accept full responsibility for allowing this to happen, and I offer no excuses.

I am sorry that I allowed this to happen, I am sorry for the offensive depiction of these great men, and I am especially sorry for the timing of such offensive depictions.

We at the Tribune-Herald spend all of our working hours trying to build some modicum of credibility with our readers.

We try to be sensitive to our readers’ needs, to their desire to be informed about their community and to their willingness to invest time with the Tribune-Herald on a daily basis.

And while I believe we remain a credible source of news and information about Central Texas, I am also mindful that what we have to sell — our credibility — is an extremely fragile commodity.

On Sunday, our credibility took a huge hit because of our shortsighted depictions of our country’s Founding Fathers.

And it did so for no good reason. The depictions weren’t particularly clever, nor were they particularly artful or creative.

But I vow that we at the Tribune-Herald will learn from this blunder.

I have already ordered changes to our production process to ensure that all section fronts of our newspaper will be seen by all senior management in our newsroom.

I am embarrassed to say that I saw this depiction at the same time as most readers: Sunday morning.

This will not happen again. Our managing editor, Becky Gregory, has already begun formulating a new process that will give more editors an opportunity to see everything that we produce while we have a chance to change it if necessary.

Our intent is to inject as much judgment into our production process as possible.

And I have delivered a clear message to all staff members that judgment must be framed within the context of reader sensibility — not staff sensibilities.

Only by constantly keeping our readers foremost in our minds and only by anticipating reader reaction based on our experience with Central Texas readers can we hope to regain and even build upon our credibility.

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• LETTERS: Strong opinions about characterizing Founding Fathers as vampires