Ho, ho, show!
We see Innovation’s Juan Antonio Giner has beaten us to it today, but we thought we’d show you some of the more remarkable poster fronts from around the country today.
Why use a poster front on Christmas Day? We say: Why not?
Rarely, on Christmas Day, do we have any actual news to put out front. Rack sales are typically very, very dismal on holidays, especially Christmas. So why not do something splashy, fun and memorable?
Naturally, if you have news, go with that. But for most papers, Christmas is one of the few days you might actually be able to catch a reader’s eye with an illustration or wild art, as opposed to a big headline or promo.
With that in mind, we’ll kick off today’s gallery with our favorite Christmas Day front, the News & Record of Greensboro, N.C., which led with this wonderful, wonderful illustration by Doug Cox:
Doug’s illo highlighted a story by Jeri Rowe in which John Lennon was name-checked in the very first sentence. You have to love that.
We were delighted with a trio of South Carolina papers. Looks like editors there have really picked up the level of design back home this year.
This is the front today of our former paper, The Herald of Rock Hill S.C., where we worked from 1988 to 1993:
The wonderful photo of a local Catholic church is by Melissa Cherry.
Down the road a bit in Columbia, Tom Peyton and his folks at The State used their page one real estate to illustrate the concept of “joy”, along with a quote from the book of Luke:
The illustration was by Susan Ardis of the McClatchy-Tribune Information Service. We’re not sure whether this moved on the MCT wire or if The State commissioned it directly — we can’t seem to find it on the MCT site. Tim Goheen, art director of MCT, is a former artist at The State.
Our favorite cover treatment in South Carolina was by the Herald-Journal of Spartanburg, which offered up this beauty:
Mike Bonner’s photo is essentially a giant Christmas card from the folks at the Spartanburg paper. Very nice.
Similarly, three papers in Kansas also struck us as very nice today. This one, too, we’d be glad to buy for a Christmas card:
Apparently, it’s an annual tradition at The Wichita Eagle to blow out a nice photo on Christmas Day. This one is by staff photog Bo Rader. Check out a wonderful gallery of proposed cover shots here.
The Capital-Journal of Topeka chose to focus on the nativity scene shown in a stained-glass window of a local Episcopal Church. The photo is by the paper’s Thad Allton:
The Hutchinson News also went with a religious theme, but turned to an illustrator to get the job done. And if you’re going to hire an artist, why not one of the best ever?
We take it, from the caption, that Botticelli’s original hangs in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Denver’s Rocky Mountain News managed to get in both a stained-glass window and a December sky in its stand-alone photo.
The photo by staffer Chris Schneider was apparently taken a couple of weeks ago during that amazing full moon.
We like the page a lot, but — no offense to our folks at the Rocky — we prefer their Christmas Eve page.
The Deseret News of Salt Lake City also strongly emphasized the religous aspect of Christmas with this piece — labeled as a “photoillustration” — by August Miller.
That’s a striking lead, but the impact is diminished a bit by the play between the top photo and the nameplate. Normally, we love stuff like this, but it might have worked better on a conventional front. The nameplate+photo competes too fiercely with the lead art on this page.
If you liked the horse a few pages back, then you’ll love the pooch on the front of today’s Times-Tribune of Scranton, Pa.:
That’s Lulu. Nice doggie. She was captured by staff photographer Butch Comegys.
The Los Angeles Daily News used this extreme close-up of Christmas ribbon.
Unfortunately, there’s no photo credit. The paper does, however, invite folks to drop by its web galleries to download proof that it really does snow in Southern California.
The tiny Star of Anniston, Ala. — circulation just under 25,000 — found an inviting local door decoration:
That’s staff photog Trent Penny with the shot.
Another tiny family-owned paper — The Bulletin of Bend, Ore., circulation about 32,500 — gave its readers an amusing shot of Santa enjoying the Oregon countryside:
Exercise like this must be why this St. Nick isn’t quite so overweight. Rob Kerr was the shooter on that one.
The Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee, Wis., is kicking off a new tradition this year, the paper says on page one:
Each year, in a place normally reserved for the top news of the day, we will share with you a gift of art. It is our hope that the artwork we select, and created by a living Wisconsin artist, will offer a moment of beauty and respite.
This year’s painting is by Tom Shropshire. Get a closer look — and see the other pieces considered for the front — in an online gallery here.
We’ll close today’s gallery with this wonderful Victorian-like piece in The Repository of Canton, Ohio:
That’s a truly wonderful piece by the Repository’s Eri Hashimoto. Find more of Eri’s work at the GateHouse Media News Service site.
Naturally, there’s a lot more out there that’s worth looking at. These are simply the pages that caught our eye.
—
It was a pretty good Christmas, here in the Apple household. I required the entire family to watch a movie they had never seen before until last night: A Christmas Story. We then slept in pretty late this morning.
Elizabeth racked up on Hannah Montana stuff and manga books is already diving into the Twilight book series. Sharon got a stuffed Tigger — she’s a huge fan of bouncy, trouncy — some nice things for her kitchen and a few gift cards.
Here they both are this morning, along with Spock, the cocker spaniel — looking like the demon spawn of Satan that he is:
Here I am with my favorite gift this year:
Actually, that was a box my mom used to send stuff to us. There was no alcohol in it. But we knew it’d make a great picture.
I got some very nice clothes, DVDs of The Dark Knight, Robot Chicken and The Family Guy’s Star Wars episode, some very cool books including a biography of Gus Grissom I’ve been wanting and Watchdogs, Blogs and Wild Hogs: A Collection of Quotations on the Media by Gordon S. Jackson.
Then we all sat down to see how much Honeybaked Ham we could stuff into our faces. I think I won that contest.
We hope you all are having the happiest of holidays. Best wishes!
December 25th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I really hate to be a Scrooge, but well, not everyone celebrates Christmas. (Like me) I’d REALLY be insulted if my paper did something like this, but that’s just my opinion. I speak for no one but myself.
December 25th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Clarification: It’s the religious fronts (like the State) that really bug me.
December 26th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Happy Christmas, Charles! And be sure to read Twilight! They’re great for a laugh.
December 26th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Glad you had a good Christmas, Charles. One clarification on The State’s illustration, Susan Ardis is a features designer and illustrator for The State, not MCT.
And to Francie, I’m sorry you were insulted by the illustration, but Columbia is one of those towns with a church on every corner and our readership tends to be very conservative and religious. Plus, the holiday is Christmas, a major religious holiday. So why not put a religious illustration or photo (like some of the other papers did) on A1 when 80% or more of your demographics are Christians? We’d be buried in letters to the editor slamming us for NOT putting something religious on the cover. You give your readership what they want.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I agree with Francie and Elizabeth. The religious covers would bother me in Nevada; even though people are hugely religious it tends to be more quiet and secluded to certain sectors of the state and cities. That and people keep to themselves. But if the paper knows its readers then it should be done. Also, it was done on Christmas day, not on a day building up to (during the week of Hunnakah which is this week this year) or some other day. The religious fronts reflect the community’s feelings and likely major activity of the day.
I would say there should be equal play with other religions, but Hannukah is a really unimportant Jewish holiday, so it would make sense to do stories about it, but not posterize it.
BTW, you’re a nerd, Charles. :) That’s high praise coming from a fellow Trekker.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I used to live in South Carolina; I used to live in Georgia. I know how religious it is. However, even in South Carolina there are other religions. You have a state-funded university in your town and the state capitol. How many professors at USC come from other places that don’t revere Christ? How many students? Even if you have a church on every corner, it doesn’t mean you have to pander. And that is what you did. You are not a church newsletter, you are a chronicler of the day’s events. Did you REALLY have to send this message? I would argue you did not. So what if your readers were ticked you didn’t have anything religious on the front page. That is what their church is for. You are the fourth estate. Act like it.