A look at Sunday’s Olympics front pages
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to miss the 2010 Olympic games, I’ve really enjoyed watching the games on TV and observing the coverage in Canadian newspapers.
Today’s the final day, though. In Monday’s papers, I expect to see a lot of pictures from today’s hockey final and, perhaps, a few pages focusing on the closing ceremonies.
Today, however, Olympics coverage among papers I could find at the Newseum was somewhat subdued — because of the enormous earthquake Saturday in Chile. And also, perhaps, because there weren’t many events Saturday in which U.S. athletes excelled.
It was a huge day for Canadians to win gold medals, however. Canada won three finals Saturday, pushing its gold medal total to 13 — more than any other country. Canadians might not have owned the podium in Toronto. But they could have it gilded.
The Globe and Mail of Toronto — circulation 332,764 — played up a nice Fred Lum staff photo of the gold-winning curling team:
Note how all the headlines play beautifully against each other. The New Gold Standard is wonderful enough, but after you plough through the three photos, you see that Team Canada Needs Just One More.
And that, of course, would be the hockey. More about hockey in a moment.
The Calgary Herald — circulation 121,800 — also blew out the curling team on page one with a huge, six-column picture by Cameron Spencer of Getty Images:
Again, a nicely composed page. And again, it’s marred only by the black box the paper insists on superimposing upon its lead art. Today, it would have worked much better stripped along the bottom of that picture.
The Chronicle Herald of Halifax — circulation 107,485 — also put out front a collection of gold winners, focusing on the curling team. But while the Calgary Herald partially covered up the poor guy on the left, the Chronicle Herald cropped him out entirely. All except for a few pixels of his bouquet.
I’m not sure I understand the logic of playing up a team photo but then slicing off one team member. Either jump more of the story or kill the promos at left. Please don’t make the lead photo smaller — it’s rather small as it is.
A big part of the problem for Halifax is that the entire above-the-page presentation is fragmented. Yes, the lead art is three-columns wide, but then you have two smaller pictures on the right, a mug shot and the logo on the left and then three small pictures across the top.
You need something big and bold to cut through the din of all this activity. And a three-column photo of 80 percent of your curling team, posing for a photo, just doesn’t cut it.
The Edmonton Journal solved this problem by simply focusing on the local guy — curling skip Kevin Martin:
The paper cropped in tight on Martin, from a picture by Ric Ernst of the Canwest News Service. This accompanies a nice column about Martin by the papers’ Olympics writer. The Journal circulates 119,909 copies daily.
The best headline of the day was found on the front of the Winnipeg Free Press, circulation 127,065:
If you’ve watched any curling at all over the past two weeks, then you get it. The picture is by Murry Gash of the Associated Press.
Also big Saturday was the men’s team pursuit speedskating competition. The Ottawa Citizen led page one today with this wonderful photo by Canwest’s John Mahoney:
Ah, perfection. The Citizen circulates 128,600 copies daily.
The Toronto Star also played three gold winners out front, but focused instead on triumphant snowboarder Jasey-Jay Anderson:
The picture is by staffer Steve Russell. The hockey promo — with the stick protruding slightly into the paper’s nameplate — is a brilliant touch.
Average daily circulation for the Star is 335,680.
Le Soleil of QuĂ©bec — circulation 87,168 — also focused on Anderson, using him to illustrate what it called the Gold Rush:
The photo is by Canadian Press.
The two Sun tabs posting their pages today looked forward to today’s hockey rematch with the U.S. On the left is Calgary, circulation 49,633. On the right is Ottawa, circulation 39,233:
The one on the right works better — mostly because it doesn’t have a mug shot of the curling skip crowding the lead art and headline. The picture is by Andre Forget of QMI.
The Vancouver Province — circulation 165,838 — attempted to weave together today’s hockey game and a number of the gold-medal winning teams Friday and Saturday into a photoillustration:
I feel like the Province had only moderate success pulling this off today — especially compared to most of the pages shown above.
While the Globe and Mail used A1 today to look back over Saturday’s gold medals, it used its special section front to spin forward to today’s hockey final:
Very elegant design and great use of a picture by staffer Peter Power.
The center spread is interesting, as well (click for a larger view):
I’m not sure whether this is an in-camera effect or a filter. The credit doesn’t mention a photoillustration, so I’m assuming it was shot this way by Jonathan Hayward of Canadian Press.
Here is today’s special section cover by the Seattle Times, featuring the gold-winning four-man U.S. bobsledding team. Click it, too, for a larger view:
The Times‘ Jon Fisch tells us this is…
…Another Jeff Paslay design, Steve Ringman photo.
We were going to go with the curling gold-medal game, but then when the US bobsled team won gold, we changed plans.
One day to go. I can’t believe it’s almost over with. For those who want to see all of our covers again, check out our Facebook page.
Average daily circulation for the Times is 263,588.
The World-Herald of Omaha, Neb., put bobsledding in its A1 centerpiece. This is Curt Tomasevicz, the brakeman for the U.S. sled who becomes the first Nebraskan to win a medal at a Winter Olympics, the paper says:
It’s a nice enough photo by the Associated Press. But wow, does that page lack punch. Is the design a little too clean and stately? Is the headline too small? Or have I simply been looking at too many Canadian pages the past two weeks?
Average daily circulation for the World Herald is 153,340.
The Herald of Everett, Wash. — circulation 50,272 — took a retrospective look at these Winter Games, using images from the entire competition:
And the Free Press of Burlington, Vt. — circulation 41,901 — also took a larger view that was complimentary to the Canadian hosts:
At least, I think that lead photo — by Robert Bukaty of the Associated Press — was complimentary.
I’ll try to make time later today to look at a few Chilean earthquake pages.
February 28th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
That Globe & Mail front page is significant for another reason: this is the first time the paper has ever published on Sundays. They’re doing three Sunday editions during the game just for distribution in Vancouver and vicinity, and touting it as the “only seven-day paper” in Vancouver, since the Sun doesn’t publish on Sundays and the Province doesn’t publish on Saturdays.
It’s interesting to see how Sunday papers have become more common in Canada in the last couple of decades. It wasn’t that long ago that there were barely half a dozen Canadian papers publishing on Sunday.