Alan Jacobson’s BFD returns
Alan Jacobson’s Best Front Design feature returned today, after an absence of more than a year.
The recipient of his Alan’s attention on day one: The Hartford Courant.
Alan writes:
There a lots of ways to tell stories: Narrative, headlines, photographs, illustrations, lists, etc. All are equally valid and effective tools. The key to effective story telling is in choosing the best means.
With today’s front page, the Hartford Courant wisely chose a map-based informational graphic to describe the shift in votes to the blue column. The Indianapolis Star and the Beaver County Times had the same impulse, but neither delivered with the specifics that Hartford provided.
Those Indy and Beaver County fronts:
Perhaps one of the stranger fronts today that Alan points out — and I’d definitely agree with him — is this poster front of poster fronts from the San Francisco Chronicle:
Alan writes:
Wasn’t there any other news in California on Saturday?
Surely this was a bulldog edition. Anyone who knows, please confirm. If you do, I promise not to call you Shirley.
Alan debuted BFD in January 2007 and posted damn near every day through September of that year, picking what he considered the best front page of that day, giving a nod to others and delivering a sharp rebuke to a few others. It was always — always — entertaining and informative.
On Sept. 20, 2007, Alan announced BFD would go on hiatus until he could bring in a collaborator. That plan, obviously, fell through.
For the record, the top 19 papers in BFD daily nods were:
1. The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va. - 16 BFD awards
2. The State, Columbia, S.C. - 13 BFD awards
3. Link, Norfolk, Va. - 12 BFD awards
4. Philadelphia Daily News - 12 BFD awards
5. RedEye, Chicago - 9 BFD awards
6. Rocky Mountain News, Denver - 9 BFD awards
7. Chicago Sun-Times - 7 BFD awards
8. Republican-American, Waterbury, Conn. - 7 BFD awards
9. Kansas City Star - 6 BFD awards
10. St. Louis Post-Dispatch - 6 BFD awards
11. Orange County Register - 5 BFD awards
12. Tampa Tribune - 5 BFD awards
13. Salt Lake Tribune - 5 BFD awards
14. The Des Moines Register - 4 BFD awards
15. Bakersfield Californian - 3 BFD awards
16. Fort Worth Star-Telegram - 3 BFD awards
17. The Daily Press, Newport News, Va. - 3 BFD awards
18. OC Post, Orange County, Calif. - 3 BFD awards
19. Winston-Salem Journal, Winston-Salem, S.C. - 3 BFD awards
* Nine with two
* 34 with one
The monthly winners were:
January: Robert Suhay, The Virginian-Pilot
February: Charles Gooch, The Kansas City Star
March: Billy Simkins, The Bakersfield Californian
April: Robert Suhay, The Virginian-Pilot
May: Scott Griffin, The Republican-American
June: Chris Courtney, Redeye
July: Jamie Hall, Tampa Tribune
August: Bill Campling, The State
Find the BFD archives here.
Find Alan’s BFD page here.