Charles Apple

The Globe and Mail of Toronto — circulation 332,764 — is publishing a special Olympics section every day.

Jayson Taylor, multimedia editor and assistant photo editor sent us a big batch of pages to show the lavish use of photography inside each section.

Jayson tells us:

We are Canada’s only true national newspaper and the official Olympic paper. We have 40 reporters and 4 photographers in Vancouver. Our photographers, Peter Power, Fred Lum, John Lehmann, and Charla Jones are doing an amazing job, nine times out of 10 beating the wires both in filing time and better images.

We have four photo editors here in Toronto handling the Olympics. Moe Doiron is the deputy managing editor for photography who is working during the day, handling news and Olympic assigning. Randy Velocci and I are photo editing A1 and I’m photo editing the Olympic section. The primary A1 designer is David Pratt and Sarah Lilleyman on the weekends. David Woodside is the designer for the Olympic section.

Today’s section was 16 pages. Today’s cover features a nice tight shot of Canadian gold medal-winning speedskater Christine Nesbitt. The picture is by Dimitar Dilkoff by Getty Images:

Here are pages two and three. Click on any of these for a larger view.

Page four, on the left, is the daily TV schedule. If you click on this one, you’ll get a much larger look that, hopefully, will allow you to read the quotes and brites down the sides. Page five, of course, is a full-page ad.

Page six features a dramatic shot of U.S. figure skater Evan Lysacek by Getty’s Saeed Khan. Page seven is dominated by a photo by staffer John Lehmann.

The center spreads each day are very nice. The subject of the day today is speedskating — a photo essay of the women’s 1,000 meters, in fact. Photos are by staffer Fred Lum and Reuters’ Andy Clark.

Huge, four-column Getty pictures found a home on pages 10 and 11.

Turn the page to see six-column shots on 12 and 13. The shot of the big Canadian hockey save is by Julie Jacobson of Reuters. The snowboarder on 13 is by Alex Livesey of Getty.

Page 14 was the home for curling news. Pictures are by the Canadian Press and Reuters.

Pages 15 and 16 are both full-page ads.

That’s today’s section. Now for highlights of the previous sections. I won’t show you every page from every day, nor will I make everything large enough to read. If I did, this blog page would never load.

Therefore, the pages below are only 400 pixels wide — twice the size you see them now. Click on anything for a larger view.

I made the TV pages — which have all sorts of interesting pullouts and tidbits — twice as large.

We’ll start with the first special section, from last Friday. It was themed to focus on the natural rivalries to watch in Vancouver.

On page four — on the right, above — is an interesting story about the Canadian vs. U.S. rivalry. Below, you can see stories about various speed and figure skating rivals.

The center spread for Wednesday was actually an ad. But I really, really liked it, showing the number and type of medals Canada has won going back to the first Winter Games in 1924. Click this one for a much larger view.

The two hockey dudes, below left, are a Canadian and a Russian. Wonderful Reuters photo by Bruce Bennett.

Saturday’s section was the first day of competition. This was the only one, so far, that ran a story out front. On the right is the first TV page. Click it to enlarge.

Saturday’s section was packed with ads. So those are the only two pages I’ll show you.

The Globe and Mail normally doesn’t publish on Sundays, but they are during the Olympics. Sunday’s special section cover featured two Canadian athletes — one successful at winning a medal and the other, not.

At left is Sunday’s TV page. On the right is a follo about the changes officials made Saturday to the luge course to slow it down. Apparently, many competitors are not happy. They’d rather the course remain the way it was.

The cool photo at upper right is by John Lehman.

Although the section has a natural doubletruck in the center, Sunday’s designers didn’t really take advantage of it. That’s not happened since. Nice coverage here of speed skaters.

The fabulous shot of the Korean skaters after their crash Saturday is by Matthew Stockman of Getty.

Here are two pages of hockey.

The odd photo on the left, here, is of an Ethiopian skier, training on the streets of Addis Ababa. On wheels. Picture by Irada Humbatova of Reuters.

Monday’s section started the trend of poster-ish fronts. While you’re clicking on the front page, below left, also note the interesting little graphic medal count across the top, highlighting the Canadian tally.

That particular cover shot was by staffer Peter Power.

Here, you see the first time the section really used the doubletruck well. The wonderful lede art of speedskater Kristina Groves is by staffer Fred Lum.

Luge on the left, curling on the right.

Jayson explains:

We ran two Olympic fronts on Tuesday. The first one was the Swiss winning gold, but then we swapped it out for pairs figure skating.

The earlier edition skier art was by staffer John Lehmann. The figure skating picture was by Jaime Squire of Getty. The nice speedskater art, below right, is by Fred Lum.

Tuesday’s doubletruck featured file art of the “Miracle on Ice” from 1980.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m finding curling fascinating. It’s also extremely photogenic. The terrific shot at below left is by Nathan Denette of the Canadian Press.

And I love the expression on the face of the Australian silver-medal winner at upper right. Apparently, he’s actually from Vancouver. The story and sidebar are about reaction to the Aussie’s behavior at the medal ceremony.

Below are pages 12 and 14, each of which contain graphics. The nice picture at upper left is by CP’s Jeff McIntosh.

Here’s the luge vs. skeleton graphic by my friend Carrie Cockburn…

…and here is Carrie’s diagram showing how to do a quadruple toe loop. Click for a larger view:

Wednesday’s front focused on Canadian snowboarder Maelle Ricker, who won a gold. The cover photo is by Getty’s Streeter Lecka.

The really interesting speedskater picture is by Jerry Lampen of Reuters.

The center spread was also devoted to Ricker. That’s a beautiful play of a Getty photo by Adrian Dennis. This was the first page on which I really regretted not seeing color.

The fairly elaborate graphic — showing how U.S. snowboarder Shaun White performs his Double McTwist 1260 — was by staffer Trish McAlaster. Click for a larger view, of course.

Here are skating, left, and biathlon, right.

Curling, left, features a photo by Marcio Sanchez of Associated Press. On the right is a nice hockey shot by staffer Peter Power.

The Globe and Mail put pictures of three U.S. gold medal winners on page one Thursday. For its Olympic section front, it concentrated on skier Lindsay Vonn. The photo by Getty’s Clive Mason is very, very similar to the one used on Thursday’s A1 by the St. Paul, Minn., Pioneer Press.

The designers saw fit to play really large this dynamite Peter Power picture of Shaun White. At right is a nice shot by Fred Lum.

Again, the cover photo subject carries through to the center spread. The huge 10-column-wide lede art was by Getty’s Clive Rose.

Pages 10 and 11 concentrated on hockey.

At upper left, here, is a truly fascinating crop of a picture by Getty’s Oliver Lang. This is a closeup of a luger’s feet, just as he begins his run. The two-shot downpage is by staffer John Lehmann.

And there you have it.

It’s easy to download PDFs or larger copies of these pages — or the entire Olympic sections, for that matter. The Globe and Mail is making its online electronic archive available to all, at no charge, for the remainder of this month.

Simply click here, and then click “launch Globereader.”

Select your edition. I simply went for the Toronto edition, which I figured would be the latest…

…and pick the day you want. Use the drop-down menu you want to see the Vancouver 2010 section.

You can read the stories online, download PDFs of pages, entire sections or entire daily editions.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under Graphics, International newspapers, Photojournalism, Sports design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.