Charles Apple

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, meaning editors and designers throughout the state had all day to figure out how to address the stunning news on page one.

Most papers stepped it up pretty well. We’re seeing a lot of first-class treatments at the Newseum, Poynter, the SND/Update blog, BFD and other sites.

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THE BEST PAGE, ONCE AGAIN: THE SUN-TIMES

The best page you’ll see today on the Blago arrest is from the Chicago Sun-Times. They went, once again, with a minimal approach that’s stunning:

Comparing it to today’s Tribune front, Innovations’ Juan Antonio Giner calls it “a picture versus a thousand words.”

Alan Jacobson liked it, too. “One word,” he says. “One eye cast in its direction. Nothing more was needed today.”

Design director Eric White writes:

James Smith — for my money, the best tab front page designer in the game — was on Page 1. We started out with a different photo and headline concept, but we rejected it. Then, James popped this photo onto the page with a daring crop, and news editor Zach Finken supplied the headline.

Managing editor Don Hayner loved it as soon as he saw it — so much so that James heard him telling a columnist, “Great story, but no refers on the front. Sorry, but we’re not going to clutter it up.”

Eric and his crew have been red-hot this fall. They wowed us with a terrific Barack Obama front during the Democratic Convention and then gave readers an amazing commemorative front the day after Obama was elected president.

Eric writes:

It helps that Don and our editor Michael Cooke are creative, tough and adventurous. They don’t want us sitting around waiting to be told what to do. Once I told Michael I had an unconventional idea for a hard news cover, and he wasn’t able to open the PDF I sent him. After I described the idea, Michael told me to go for it, saying he’d always stand up for a guy willing to take a risk.

Trust like that — you can’t beat it. Take that kind of environment and combine it with a great crew and the rush that comes with reporting big news and you can’t help but be inspired.

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HANDCUFFED BY AN EXCLUSIVE ON ANOTHER SUBJECT

The story itself has pretty good impact on today’s Chicago Tribune front, but it seems a shame it’s pushed downpage by the Trib’s exclusive interview with Obama regarding his foreign policy:

What a lousy day to be saddled with an exclusive that practically no one will be talking about!

Given what they had to juggle, though, it’s a damn good page. The advantage of this fall’s redesign really becomes clear here: It basically gave the Tribune designers a Spinal Tap-like “11″ for their volume control.

By the way, if you’ve not seen it yet, zip over to the SND/Update blog where Matt Mansfield talked with Tribune and Sun-Times folks about the extra editions they put out Tuesday afternoon. It’s well worth your time.

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LEADING WITH A COOL PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION

Chris Soprych, AME/Design of the Rockford Register-Star, photoshopped a very interesting centerpiece treatment for his page one:

The back-story of what you’re looking at is this: In 2002, the Register-Star endorsed Blagojevich for governor. The next day, a copy of the editorial appeared in the mailbox of Wally Haas, the Register-Star’s editorial page editor, on which Blago had written what you see here:

Dear Wally, I won’t let you down.

Right there in the governor’s own handwriting. Ouch!

Reflections of a Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter just gushed over this page today. And for good reason.

The Register-Star is a Gatehouse-owned paper with a daily circulation of about 70,000.

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IS THIS A GOOD HEADLINE?

Both Alans — Jacobson and Mutter — seemed to like the headline the Tampa Tribune used today:

We don’t know, though. The parallel is lost on us. Lincoln was never governor of Illinois. And believe us, there’s been a lot of other stuff over the past 143 years that would have set ol’ Abe to spinning. Hell, if Blago ends up doing time, he’d be the fourth Illinois governor in less than 40 years to go to prison.

Other than this page, we’ll constrain ourselves to looking at Illinois fronts. Kudos to the Tribune, though, for citing the “Tampa Connection” in the bottom right of their package: Blogo attended the University of Tampa before trasferring to Northwestern in 1977.

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HOW ABOUT A PUN HEADLINE?

The Telegraph of Alton, Ill. (circulation about 23,000), chose a pun for its lead headline.

Normally, I love a good pun, but a) This one wasn’t that good, and b) It seems awfully light for a story of this magnitude.

Interesting how Alton used two photos of Blago on its front and both were file photos. The shot of the governor kissing the baby seems oddly disconnected from the story. A poor choice, we think. And we also think the fade behind the quote on the secondary photo didn’t quite work. A cutout might have been the way to go.

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SEVERAL LED WITH A SCOWL

A number of Illinois papers led with this Associated Press file photo from April 2007 that shows Blagojevich in a perfect scowl — which worked well with a horizontal crop in the Northwest Herald of Crystal Lake, Ill. (circulation about 38,600):

We like the Herald’s centerpiec quite a bit, with refers dividing dueling stories and quotes down low. We don’t think the tinted rail down the left works, though. We wish they had stretched the rest of the package across all six columns.

Here’s that same photo in a vertical crop:

The strong vertical worked well for the DeKalb Daily Chronicle (circulation about 10,000), which wisely wiped everything else off A1 to make room for the story. We also like how they downsized their nameplate today.

The tint works well for the refers stripped across the bottom, but the rail down the left didn’t really need the tint. In fact, we think that tint actually detracts from the photo. We’d suggest using a thin rule to set off that rail.

Here’s that same photo cropped into a tabloid front:

Nice work as aways from the folks at RedEye. We wish they could have lost the refers this time, though. On a day like this, are any of those three stories going to cause someone to pick up the paper?

The only one of these that positively didn’t work is the Southtown Star (of Tinley Park; circulation about 40,000) which was this close to a truly outstanding front:

Yep. Folks, that mosaic-of-tiny-photos thing has become a real cliché over the past 10 or 15 years. It’s probably best to avoid it, unless you have a really, really special case — perhaps on in which media coverage or historical photos themselves are an integral part of the story.

Sadly enough, if the Star had simply used that AP file photo here, instead of the mosiac, we’d be raving about this page. That’s very nice treatment of the story across the bottom.

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HOW IT PLAYED IN THE CAPITAL

For those of you who never had to memorize the state capitals — or who never watched Animaniacs — it might surprise you to learn the capital of Illinois is not Chicago. It’s Springfield.

The capital city State Journal Register (daily circulation about 55,500) played the story very well today… we think:

As you can see, they used the same photo the Sun-Times used, but with a different headline and design — as you’d expect, given they’re a broadsheet. This design is very, very nice. Unfortunately, as you can also see — we’re apparently looking at an incomplete version of today’s front. At least we hope it’s an early version.

If the designer of this page would send us a fresh one, we’d be proud to post it. This is very, very nice work. Just incomplete.

The News-Democrat of Belleville — a 54,000-circulation daily way down in Southwestern Illinois — led with a similar photo of Blago being driven away by the FBI. But unlike the powerful shot used by the Sun-Times and the Journal Register, the News-Democrat went with one in which all you can see of the governor is a tiny slice of the side of his head:

Nice, clean design. But poor choice of lead art.

The Journal Star of Peoria (daily circulation about 65,000) led with much better file art, but the designer added too many extras which, we feel, distracts readers from the content on the page:

The headline and lead art are fine, and the basic design is sound. But the mug shots moriced into the left of the lead photo — with little lines to show you where in the rail they should go — The cutout of Obama, the logjam in the lower right of Obama, the swimmer and the breakfast promo… it’s all just too much.

The actual page probably had an ad across the bottom of it, too. Or, at least, we hope it was an ad, rather than this empty box. Probably another PDF problem with a page sent to the Newseum.

The Daily Herald — which circulates about 146,000 copies in suburban Chicago — was another paper that was this close to producing a truly great front. The crew there had the right idea, but tried to cram in just a little too much info.

We like very much the strip across the top, illustrating all the things Blagojevich reportedly did. They seem a little crunched horizontally, though. We wish they could have narrowed down the photo icons a tad and added some white space between them:

The four bullets beneath the main hed, though, are just too many. Three would have been better. Four give us way too many words and cause each point to be too brief.

What do we mean? The first bullet reads: “First charged while in office.” What that means is, of all the Illinois governors who have been charged with crimes, Blago is the first to be charged while still in office.

If you didn’t already know what that means, you wouldn’t know what it means. And if you already know what it means, you wouldn’t need to see it crammed above the fold.

The same goes for the other blocks:

• “Quinn says he should go.” Quinn who? Is there a previous reference on this page we’re missing?
• “Senate seat for sale.” No mention that it’s Obama’s seat?
• “Green lanes also peddled.” OK, that one is probably clear enough for Chicago area readers. But you see our point.

We also think the knockout with the quote was unnecessary and distracting. It might have been better to crop in on the photo — we don’t need to see Blago’s ear — and simply run the text against a white background.

Or, better yet, move the cropped photo to the left, Cut out Blago’s face, put it on a black background, stretch the background all the way to the right side of the page and reverse the quote out of that. That way, Blago would be looking into the quote, rather than out of it.

Just a thought.

And finally, we have the Courier News of Elgin, that also went with file staff art of the governor suffering from a hand cramp:

The basic design here seems sound. We think the story under the lead photo should have been broken into at least two legs and possibly  three. And the refer box between that and the “Madigan” story seems to get a little lost. We wonder if a tint box might have been better here (despite the fact they used one on the “Operation Jingle Bells” graphic).

We find it fascinating, though, that the editors in Elgin chose the headline, the quote under the hed, both stories and an excerpt of an editorial all to support one thing: Their feeling that Blagojevich should resign.

No balance. No “on the other hand.” No nothing. Just “he needs to step down.” “It’s a disservice to citizens if he doesn’t step down.” “Oust governor.” “Step aside for the good of Illinois.”

You just don’t see this kind of advocacy journalism — especially on page one. We suspect you’ll see it a lot more, though, over the next few years.

So we’ll award Elgin — with a circulation of about 13,000 — a C+ for design, a gold star for effort and an A+ for content.

Overall, the papers today in the Land of Lincoln were sharp and snappy.

Way to go, guys. Let’s see how you top it tomorrow!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Innovative ideas, News design, Small papers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.