Charles Apple

You can almost hear them across the country:

Na-na-na Na. Na-na-na Na. Hey, hey, hey…

By the time Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was outsted from office by the state senate yesterday, he hardly had any allies left. The evidence against him is so damning; his behavior since knowledge of the governmnent wire taps so erratic.

We compared and contrasted play of the Blago story when it first broke. We thought we do it again now, using the front pages from across the state of Illinois posted at the Newseum.

Our favorite front — once again — is the Chicago Sun-Times:

The smirk on Blago’s face tells it all. The headline is perfect. The promos — all six of them — are easy to read, yet don’t overpower the art. The photo is by staffer John J. Kim.

No doubt about it, the Sun-Times has been on a roll lately. Eric White and his crew produced compelling fronts for the Democratic National Convention, the day after Election Day,  the day Blagojevich was arrested and President Barack Obama’s first day in office.

The Elgin Courier-News – which converted to a tabloid earlier this week — used that same image of Blago, but they chose to cut it out and superimpose it over a photo of the senate:

The headline is a good one. But simply not effective against that background. Oddly enough, this page would have worked much better had the designers simply placed the cutout of Blago’s head on a plain white background. That would have given this headline extra pop.

Note the promo across the bottom: “Just a reminder: No Saturday edition.”

The Chicago Tribune opted for a Terrence Antonio James shot of the deposed governor after he returned to Chicago last night:

Notice how readable the headlines are, superimposed over the lead photo? There’s maximum contrast between the white letterforms and the dark photo. Unlike the Elgin example, above.

We love how the ex-governor’s hand is poised by the Tribune logo. It’s like he’s telling the Trib: Talk to the hand. (The Tribune, you’ll remember, had the Blago story first but held it until the government was ready to make an arrest.)

The Journal Register of Springfield — Illinois’ capital city — went with staff art by Jason Johnson above the nameplate:

It makes for rather small play on the page, but a powerful impact above the fold — and in the newspaper rack.

But note how the white headline falls across that light spot in the photo. Oopsie. This might have been a little more readable in print than in a 400-pixel-wide jpeg, but still: For maximum impact you need maximum contrast. And this isn’t maximum. It’s just barely minimum.

A number of Illinois papers went with a photo of Blago pressing his lips together as he waits for a signal from the supreme court justice before proceeding with his address to the senate Thursday. The picture was by Seth Perlman of the Associated Press:

We love that headline and we love the impact the folks at the Northwest Herald of Crystal Lake get by running it so large.

Also, notice the way the designer reduced the paper’s nameplate in order to punch up the volume on the story. We’ve seen a lot of this lately on big stories. More about that soon.

This was our second-favorite page of the day, right after the Sun-Times.

RedEye went with a wonderful crop of the same picture:

And the headline makes us laugh. Overuse of that phrase will turn it into a cliché one day soon. But it’s not quite there yet.

The Alton Telegraph used that same photo and also came up with a clever headline:

We sympathize with the poor designer, being forced to squeeze “Unanimous” into a half-column tint box. Ouch!

And the Register Star of Rockford also used that same photo, but even smaller. Its headline, though, was one of the most gleeful of the day:

The Daily Herald of Arlington Heights ran a staff photo taken at that same moment — by Mark Welsh:

In a lot of ways, this photo angle seemed more effective. We love the senators conferring in the back. Are they discussing a point of procedural law? Or are they taking orders for carry-out from Long John Silver’s?

We love the main headline — what impact! — but with a deck above and  two bullet-point decks below, did this push that wonderful photo too far down the page? Unless we’re off in our calculations, the fold would have fallen right across the microphone head. Which seems rather awkward.

The Quad-City Times — technically in Iowa but hey, two of the four Quad Cities are in Illinois — took a similar approach. The photo is good enough and the text boxes are carefully surrounded with white space to increase their umph:

But again, does all that space plus the double-decker headline plus the refer boxes all team up to push the lead photo down too far?

It seems that way to us. But the real test is in the rack.

The Belleville News-Democrat seemed to emphasize the senatorial angle, as opposed to the Blago angle, by focusing on the vote counts and by using an AP shot of the senate chamber:

Remember our discussion above on maximizing contrast when superimposing a headline on a photo? The designers realized there might be a problem here with the white letterforms and things like papers lying on senators’ desks, so they decided to use a drop-shadow.

It doesn’ work perfectly: Note the “j” in “Blagojevich” gets lost, as does the semicolon. But it’s better than it would have been.

A very colorful, active front.

And finally, two papers led with an Associated Press photo showing passersby in Chicago, watching Blagojevich’s speech on a huge TV monitor. The Dekalb Daily Chronicle took a very safe, conventional approach, yet ran the photo very large:

Finally… can you believe the headline the folks in Tinley Park chose?

We’re not sure we’d have been comfortable with that one. But you have to admit, it catches you off-guard.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 10:16 am and is filed under News design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.