oki doki thanks Jason
basically I am using thi son news page so that the client can add a news item and 'hide' it until they are ready to 'publish' it
that works fine with the list of news articles on the news page itself, but on every page I have a 'latest news' panel which uses the most recent article from the news list
how would I stop the panel section from showing a blank space if the most recent article is 'hidden' and get it to actually show the most recent visible article?
does that make sense?