Charles Apple

UPDATED:
I put out a number of inquiries for names of designers of particular pages. As replies roll in, I’ll continually update. If you have the name of a designer, editor or photo editor to add, please feel free:

chuckapple [at] cox.net

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Thee last two times I went out of town, news affecting visual journalists has broken. For a small fee, I’ll tip you off the next time I’ll be out of pocket.

This time, of course, the news was the untimely death of “the King of Pop,” Michael Jackson. If affected visual journalists because so many papers not only put him on the front of Friday’s papers, they made him the lede — or a into a poster front — on Friday’s paper.

Apparently, blowing out Michael was a no-brainer for most papers. That surprises me. Hey, I’m all in favor of noting the passage of pop culture icons on page one, but Michael, I think, was just a bit on the shady side. Yeah, he was never convicted of anything, but the things he admitted to seemed awfully, awfully weird. And all that grotesque surgery?

I’m not the only journalist who felt this way. Editor & Publisher last week surveyed readers on how they felt about media overcoverage of Michael’s death. Juan Antonio Giner posted a selection of pages but referred to them as “front pages of the past, not the future.” Steven Henson, managing editor of the Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain, editorialized Sunday about the rampant poster front treatment in papers around the country.

Sure, blow him out on the entertainment front and then refer to that prominently from A1. But commemorate Michael Jackson with a poster front? I would have voted against it.

Given that admission up front — as well as my disclosure that I liked his work and, in fact, am listening to music from the two Michael Jackson CDs I own — here is a belated look at a few notable Friday front pages…

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OUR TOP TEN MICHAEL JACKSON PAGES

Some of the best pages of the day — as archived at the Newseum — were produced by small papers.

We liked the lead art chosen by the Enterprise of Beaumont, Texas — it’s a shot of Michael in his 1993 Super Bowl halftime performance. It was a little different than what most newspapers chose and the strong, six-column presentation was dramatic:

We liked the fact that Beaumont kept other news and promos out front as well, including the death of Farrah Fawcett. The headline was as dramatic as the photo.

And that should come as no surprise, judging by what we hear from Enterprise editor Tim Kelly. He writes:

The Beaumont Enterprise’s front page from last Friday was designed by copy desk chief Vic Odegar. Vic is a past winner of the American Copy Editors Society national headline-writing contest, a two-time Texas Copy Editor of the Year and a past winner of Hearst Newspapers’ Eagle Award.

I should also give credit to our AME for presentation and online, David Constantine, who I know had a hand in the design and also pointed out your blog to me. A lot of what we are is thanks to David, who worked at the Chicago Tribune and New York Times before winding up here to be close to family.

We’re also curious about the ad stripped across the bottom. You see the very subtle dogleg, right? Very interesting.

Our No. 2 favorite Friday front was — no surprise, perhaps — from our former colleagues at The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va.:

Again, we’re not so sure this story deserved poster front treatment. But once that decision was made, the Pilot pulled it off with its usual flair. No one does this sort of thing on a regular basis better than the Pilot.

Nice headline, too. And a hell of a rack presence. Jon Benedict was the designer, we’re told. Hmm. He’s the same guy who impressed us last weekend, too. Very interesting.

Our No. 3 favorite Friday front was another paper we’ve praised often: RedEye, the free tabloid produced by the Chicago Tribune:

It’s a dramatic crop and a terrific headline. Like they’ve done from time to time, the RedEye designers dropped the paper’s logo down to the bottom of the page.

Chris Courtney of Tribune Interactive tells us the page was designed by…

Trent Koland with the photo assist from Chase Agnello-Dean.

Turns out you’ll soon be able to buy a t-shirt with that cover on it at your local Target.

Notice how simple this page is, as well as the one above it. Simple is good.

And speaking of simple, that’s also the case with our No. 4 favorite Michael Jackson front — this one by the tabloid Philadelphia Daily News:

As opposed to some of the other portraits of Michael we saw Friday, this one shows the King of Pop the way we prefer to remember him — before he got quite so carried away with all that cosmetic surgery.

The Daily Times of Kerrville, Texas, played the story a bit more like we would have advocated: Centerpiece position on page one, but not even the lead story:

We also like the way Paul Wallen and his colleagues built the package to include both Michael and Farrah. The lead-in listing vignettes we remember of the two — the Moon Wal, the poster, the white glove, the hair — is nothing short of perfect.

Our only quibble here: We wish they could have found color photos of both.

The Post-Tribune of Merrillville, Ind., used a photo of Michael that’s quite a bit older than most readers might remember him — As an 11-year-old in 1972:

They have a good excuse, though: Formerly based in Gary, the Post-Tribune is actually Michael’s hometown newspaper.

This beautifully presented tribute page was our No. 6 favorite Michael Jackson page.

We mentioned earlier that we prefer to remember Michael from the early-to-mid-1980s period. If you felt compelled to run a portrait of him in his latter years, this might have been the one to use:

Not only did Newsday pick just the right photo with a perfect crop, it also split the difference by producing a reversible, wrap around cover. Flip the paper over and find an iconesque full-cover photo of Farrah.

Nicely done, Newsday. You’re no. 7.

Our No. 8 favorite Friday page was another one chosen because of they way it played the story — As a dominant centerpiece, but again, with plenty of other news out front:

In particular, we love the headline. It summed up the entire day.

Our No. 9 favorite front of the day focuses on one of the aspects we’ll remember most about Michael Jackson — his incredible dance steps:

I do indeed recalll watching TV one night in 1983, when Michael first performed his famous Moonwalk dance. It was stunning. This front made me smile with that memory.

In addition, lots of papers ran a series of photos of Michael’s changing face. Some face sequences worked better than others. This one — only six mug shots across the bottom of a tab page — might have been the most effective of all.

That, by the way, was O Dia from Rio de Janerio, Brazil.

And speaking of mug shot sequences, we enjoyed the one on the front of the Chicago Sun-Times Friday, our No. 10 favorite Michael Jackson page:

The Sun-Times‘ Eric White tells us:

I did that one. We felt that no one pic of Michael Jackson really captured his essence — to some, he was the precocious kid fronting the Jackson 5, others think of the Thriller era, others his changing appearance, others think of the molestation allegations. So we just charted him through the years in pictures.

What a tragic story these head shots are. By the time you get down to the last row, you can see what a monstrosity his face had become. Downright scary. And he had been such a good-looking guy, too.

This page supports my point: His death at only age 50 is tragic. But not nearly so tragic as what he did himself over the last third of his life.

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OTHER NOTABLE FRONTS

A number of pages didn’t make our Top 10 list but we still felt were notable for either their choice or play of lead art or other factors that made them unusual.

We really, really liked the play of this centerpiece on the front of the Tuscaloosa News, circulation 32,700, designed by Lauren Barrera:

It would easily have made our Top 10, were it not for the timeline above the package, which, we feels, detracts from the whole and pushes the package too far down the page.

We wish there had been a way to put the timeline beneath the photo. Or, better yet, push the timeline inside. There’s nothing, really, in the timeline that merits play atop A1.

That photo, though — again, from Michael’s 1993 Super Bowl appearance — is dynamite. USA Today thought so, too:

Interesting thing: When it departs from its template, USA Today can be downright gorgeous.

Many, many newspapers chose lead art of Michael on stage, in concert. And most seemed to use photos of Michael’s later period — the past decade or two.

The Kansas City Star has earned a reputation lately for zigging when everyone else zags. Designer Charles Gooch used an older photo of Michael from the 1980s, before his major surgery period:

Charles tells us:

Worth noting: We picked that photo specifically because it was taken at Arrowhead Stadium where Michael kicked off the Victory tour.

Ah, a local angle with the lede art! Perfect!

We love the vertical package, the timeline and the weight of it all. This is a very nice treatment.

Earlier, we showed you Michael’s hometown paper. Michael spent much of his later years living in Los Angeles, so the L.A. Times, you could argue, was his other home paper.

The LAT played the story much, much larger than we would have expected, devoting nearly two-thirds of the front page to Michael:

That’s a wonderful photo by Simon Kwong of Reuters.

Several papers referred to Farrah as a 1970s icon. Bonus points to the LAT for showing, on A1, the very icon itself: The famous poster.

The Denver Post was very solid but not fancy:

That’s a very dramatic photo to begin with. But the nice blue gel lights in the background contrast very well with the red reverse bar in the Post nameplate. The complimentary colors really suck in the eyeballs.

Also, note the mug shots across the bottom. Repeating the same shape seven times creates a visual rhythm that contrasts nicely with the changing face in the pictures themselves.

We’ve seen the Times, but how did the Tribune company’s other papers play the story?

Fort Lauderdale used a large photo of Michael in concert with a small label in the upper right and a two-deck hed on the story at the bottom of the page. But on lead headline to speak of:

Perhaps the story needed no headline. If so, then the SunSentinel may have done the right thing. We don’t think so, though.

Likewise, the four mugs across the bottom of the page might have been stronger had they all been sized the same. See ODia or the Denver Post, above.

Orlando knocked down its nameplate, played up a huge label hed and ran a six-column photo:

Bonus points to the Sentinel for using a photo that made Michael look a little less grotesque.

And, up in Hartford, the Courant cut Michael out, ran a vintage early 1970s Jackson Five secondary shot, and skewed its stories around the foreground:

The overall effect was a little scattered, we think. Why not align the left side of the lede story up with the left side of the secondary story, so the drop caps line up? Then, use the invisible like formed by the stories as the left side of the Jackson Five photo?

The bottom — non-Michael — part of the page works quite well. Despite the ad.

Tucson’s Daily Star chose a latter concert shot in which the grimace on Michael’s face kind of disguises his extensive facial surgery. Of all the latter-day shots, this one bothers us least of all:

The simple headline works nicely here, as does the timeline across the bottom, grouped by decade. The text there determines the width of the photos, not the photos themselves. If you don’t use the same size for photos across the bottom of your Michael Jackson package, this is the way to do it.

And the Journal of Winston-Salem, N.C. — a paper we really need to watch more often — constructed a very nice montage of Michael images for its centerpiece:

Normally, we advise folks to stay away from montages. Too many montages lack a dominant image; a focal point.

Not so here. Michael’s red shirt and dynamic pose in the top photo draw the eye there first. The smaller images work well together. The entire package is reversed out black — visually arresting but risky, if color registration isn’t just perfect.

Hopefully, the Journal took the magenta and yellow and most of the cyan out of that black background to ensure readability. They might have bumped up the point size of the reversed stories, as well.

Our favorite part, though, is the headline. That sums up our feelings perfectly:

Boy wonder became superstar, but life took bizarre turn

And how!

In all, a wonderfully-designed package for the 82,000-circulation daily. Our compliments to the kitchen staff: Richard Boyd and Nicholas Weir, we’re told.

Not many papers — other than Merrillville, Indiana — reached clear back to the early 1970s for a vintage shot of Michael. We’re not sure why Het Parool of Amsterdam, chose one as lead art:

That was taken in 1977, after Michael’s Jackson Five years but before he got involved in the movie version of The Wiz or started work on his Off the Wall album.

We presume this was shot locally, in the Netherlands. If so, then we love it.

A few papers focused their main visual on iconesque images of Michael: Vignettes that remind us of why we liked him — and why we’ll remember him — as an entertainer.

Richmond, for example, chose a shot that reminds us of all those incredible music videos Michael made in the 1980s and early 1990s, before it all got so weird:

That one is from Black or White, 1991.  We’d love to have seen lead art from Billie Jean or Thriller. A few papers used publicity shots of Thriller, but not to good effect, unfortunately.

Extra of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ran nothing but an icon: Michael’s sequined glove:

Quite possibly our least favorite front of the day was the result of this lead photo in Friday’s National Post of Toronto, Canada:

The weird, straight hair. The surreal chipmunk nose. Blowing a kiss. This photo conjures up all those mental images of Michael that we don’t want to remember. Ick.

Which brings us to…

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DECIDEDLY TACKY

A number of papers went in directions from which we would love to have pulled them.

We’ll start with the headline on this relatively tame example from the New York Post:

“Dead.” Yep, that’s a fact. Not very nice, though. How about something instead that addresses the suddenness or untimeliness of his death?

Or, how about “Goodbye”? “Farewell”?

For the same reason, this one from the Daily Observer of Kingston, Jamaica, bugged us:

“Speechless” probably refers to the surprise felt by many when they heard the news on Thursday. But in this use, y’know, it looks like they’re calling Michael Jackson speechless.

Which, we admit, he was. But you see our point. Not where you want to go with a headline.

The award for worst U.S. headline has to go to the Boston Herald:

We found this lead photo on the Las Últimas Noticias of Santiago, Chilé, disturbing:

It looks as if they combed the archives to find a shot in which Michael had closed his eyes or blinked and then they rotated the photo to make it look like a photo of Michael Jackson in death. Creepy.

Our least favorite page of the day, however, is this one from Panama’s Dia a Dia:

Admittedly, it could have been worse. He could have been grabbing someone else’s crotch.

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That’s our take on Friday’s Michael Jackson front pages.

Did we miss your favorite? Did we miss the one you did yourself? Let us know what you think who produced the best Michael page.

Find quite a few more in Mario Garcia’s blog.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 9:01 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.