Charles Apple

UPDATED Monday, Jan. 5 with a corrected photo credit.
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Our pal Tony Briggmin, assistant presentation editor of the Bellingham (Wash.) Herald, writes this morning:

Curious to see the front-page treatment of Utah’s awesome Alabama beatdown, I discovered the Times-Picayune took us back to 1993 for their hed:

Hey, we love pun and pop-culture headlines.

But in this case? Yeah, we agree with Tony: This headline would have been a scream… sixteen years ago.

While we were poking around the Newseum, we picked up a few other fronts to show either the crushing Sugar Bowl upset (if you’re an Alabama fan) or the affirmation that Utah was for real this season and should have played for a national title (if you’re not).

Several papers in Alabama played off “bitter Sugar Bowl” wordplay.

Birmingham’s centerpiece is solid enough, but the impact of its two Sugar Bowl pictures is diminished a great deal by the decision to cram four NFL shots across the top of the page:

Perhaps this could have worked, had those four photos filled a six-column strip. But then you have the little guy with a paintbrush in the upper left. It’s all too much, above the nameplate.

Is that paint story really going to sell papers today? Our suggestion: Kill the painter and apply that space to a flatter, more airy promo — if you even need a promo today.

Or, better yet, choose a vertical lede photo for the Sugar Bowl story to beef up that centerpiece. Or take ‘Bama across six columns and make the horizontal photo larger.

Tuscaloosa, too, didn’t play the story nearly as well as we would have hoped.

The first problem is the main hed: “What happened?” Well, offhand, we’d say you got your asses kicked. Next question, please.

The photo of the fans booing is kind of interesting — and shocking. That is, until you read the cutline. They’re booing the officials and not their team.

We wonder if that particular photo is a good choice with the deck on the story: “Tide players wonder if Sugar Bowl loss tarnishes team’s legacy.”

Kevin Wendt’s Huntsville Times chose to focus on the emotion of an Alabama player, and to dump any skyboxes or promos in order to get that player’s face above the fold. Good call:

That photo was by Mark Almond of The Birmingham News. The News shares photos with sister Newhouse papers in Huntsville and Mobile, says Scott Walker, AME of the News.

Oh, and note the decks on the page one column:

Sluggish players?
Overconfidence?
What happened?

Now, that’s the way to use question heds.

Meanwhile, the Utah papers were almost giddy in their presentation today. The Deseret News used a particularly nice headline:

If the designers want to reverse their nameplate out of a tint box, fine, but black-on-dark background just doesn’t work. Make that nameplate white and you may have a winner here.

The Salt Lake Tribune came away with today’s best Sugar Bowl front:

This  celebration shot isn’t as much of a cliché as the old trophy shot. The tilt photographer Chris Detrick gave his camera adds interest to the picture and to the page.

The editors chose to contain all their stories to the sports section, giving this huge photo complete dominance above the fold. What rack presence this page has!

Our only quibble: If you’re going to use a photo this large on A1, you should probably make darned sure you put a credit on it. We spent way too much time poking around the Trib’s web site searching for Chris Detrick’s name.

So much time, in fact, that we feel compelled to get our money’s worth out of it: Chris Detrick. Chris Detrick. Chris Detrick.

Other than that little detail, though: Very nice job, Tribune.

And nice job, Utes.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Amusing stuff, News design, Newspapers, Sports design, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.