Charles Apple

Have you seen this yet? Snarky TV pseudo-newsguys Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are on the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly magazine:

On the left, od course, is the cover to which we refer. On the right is a controversial cover published this summer by The New Yorker that supposedly made fun of right-wing digs of Barack Obama and his wife but was widely interpreted as being anti-Obama itself.

EW’s Josh Wolk describes the not-exactly-politically-correct photo shoot:

As he stands by the catering table in ‘’secret Muslim” garb, [Stewart] ponders, ”Would it be weird to be dressed like this and have a bagel, salmon, and a schmear?”

Pseudo-blowhard Stephen Colbert has his own worries. Striking his best Michelle-as-Black-Panther pose, he glances at the original cartoon and realizes that he’s ”hippier” than the potential First Lady. Gesturing at his own waist, he moans, ”I could drop a baby like a peasant.”

Read the entire story here. The best quote, from Stewart:

We’ve got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ”I don’t know!”

It’d be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ”I don’t know what the f— is going on! I’m getting wet and it’s windy and I don’t know why and it’s making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?”

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So Tony Briggmin of the Bellingham, Washington, Herald saw my post today on the Hartford Courant and Virginian-Pilot meltdown pages and writes:

Hope you’re enjoying Harrisburg.  Check out the Kansas City Star’s cover when you get a chance.

Sure enough, it’s a stunning front. The Star chose to go with what is essentially an editorial cartoon on the front to illustrate the story:

Very interesting. No cliché six-column fever chart. No cliché shot of a broken-hearted stock broker. It’s falling piggy banks. Note the Bear Stearns pig whose fall has been broken by Uncle Sam.

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UPDATE:

Charles Gooch was kind enough to respond to our query. He writes:

The illustration was a brainstorm. Design/Graphics director Greg Branson, illustrator Hector Casanova and I were spitting out ideas. We were already working on something with piggy banks. Hector proposed something about a rickety Indiana Jones-style bridge. Greg combined the two.

Hector wound up hand drawing it and I handled the design. It helped that we didn’t have anything else worthy of above-the-fold presentation.

Our new editor, Mike Fannin, wants to be bold and daring in our attempt to grab the attention of our readers. We don’t often have this kind of opportunity, so we took it.

Fabulous stuff, Charles. Bold and daring indeed.

Find our earlier post on this topic here. Find Mario Garcia’s post on this topic here.

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Looks like Grey Blackwell of the Raleigh News & Observer has done it again. Just in time for political conventional season, too.

In his latest animated musical masterpiece, Grey depicts presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain as they argue over who has the more impressive list of celebrity supporters in Hollywood.

Forget those already-stale JibJab guys. Grey kicks their asses.

Find it here. Be prepared to e-mail it to all your pals.

Read the Q&A with Grey that we published earlier this year here.

Find more of Grey’s work archived here.

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Editor & Publisher reports a most unusual correction in the Sunday New York Times book section.

The correction:

An illustration with the Up Front column last Sunday was published in error. The Howard Hampton it depicts is the leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario, not the reviewer with the same name who was profiled in the column.

The correction was accompanied by a fresh illo:

Art by Joe Ciardiello

Very amusing. If you’re not the one who made the error, that is.

Find the correction here. Find the original July 20 review — with “correction appended” — here. Find a brief bio of Howard Hampton, the NYT reviewer here. Find the E&P brief here.

They don’t have this one posted yet, but if you love finding humor in the misery of others, then you’ll love the Regret the Error web site. Check it out.

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Wired’s Scott Carney reports from India:

[Editor-in-Chief Syed] Fazlulla, who is deep into creating the next issue of the handcrafted The Musalman daily newspaper, frowns as he deciphers the handwriting and searches for a cover story. After some consideration, he passes the page to his brother who translates it into Urdu. He in turn sends the text to the back room where writers take calligraphy quills in hand and begin.

Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs — writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art.

No Illustrator. No Freehand. No InDesign. No CCI. No web refers.

A newspaper written entirely by hand.

How the hell do they pull it off?

Each katib is responsible for one page. If someone is sick, the others pull double shifts — there are no replacements anywhere in the city. When calligraphers make mistakes they rewrite everything from scratch. They earn 60 rupees (about $1.50) per page.

The final proofs are transferred onto a black and white negative, then pressed onto printing plates. The paper is sold for one cent on the streets of Chennai.

Read all about it — in a story not written by hand – in Wired.

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A SAMPLING OF A1 BATMAN PROMOS

After careful combing through the pages posted at the Newseum, here are my top-10 favorite across-the-top-of-A1 promo treatments. They’re rated primarily on how unpredictable and inventive they struck me.

10. BANGOR DAILY NEWS
Bangor, Maine

We’ve all seen this studio art by now. But the reverse nameplate really pops and the typography is very nice.

Does the fisherman look like he’s about to smack Heath upside the head?

9. THE TIMES
Munster, Ind.

Another use of the handout art, but the reverse treatment incorporating the nameplate works for me. We should mess with nameplates more often.

8. LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER
Lexington, Ky.

Still, that same art and still, that same treatment as in the previous two. But nicely done.

7. CENTRE DAILY TIMES
State College, Pa.

As nice as I found those black reverse promos, this much lighter, whiter one works very well for the Times. That’s the best crop I’ve seen yet for that particular handout photo.

6. SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

A handout photo, perhaps, but one we’ve not seen umpteen million times. Very sophisticated treatment, with the translucent strip. The clever pun head — and not one everyone else was using — helps a lot.

5. PENSACOLA NEWS-JOURNAL
Pensacola, Fla.

Pensacola zigs while everyone else is zagging by ignoring the studio art and going with something straight out of the comics. The interplay with the nameplate is particularly sweet.

4. THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Norfolk, Va.

Handout art, but cropped and used in a way that no one else could get away with. This is why they’re the Pilot and the rest of us are not.

3. THE POST-STANDARD
Syracuse, N.Y.

Was that a handout photo? If so, I can’t believe more folks didn’t use it. The reverse around the nameplate is dramatic; the typography is immaculate. And the abundance of blue above the fold makes for an attractive package.

2. THE FRESNO BEE
Fresno, Calif.

Here’s another photo I’ve only seen in one or two places. A fabulous use of a dramatic shot. Loses points because of the blue box in the upper left and the “7″ in the upper right. Is that a page number? It’s unclear.

And my favorite A1 Batman treatment…

1. THE HERALD
Rock Hill, S.C.

I have to admit, I cheated on this one. For some reason, The Herald’s Friday front wasn’t posted at the Newseum today.

But Friday morning — only my fifth day back in town — I stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast, spotted this in the rack and couldn’t pay my 35 cents fast enough.

Presentation editor Virginia Wilcox writes:

Idea was bandied about among several folks, but Chuck McShane gets the final credit for pulling it together.

My hat’s off to Virginia. She and her folks are kicking major ass. The paper — at which I worked from 1988 to 1993; I even redesigned it in 1990, but that was a couple of redesigns ago — has looked great all week.

This one goes into my slide show as another fabulous small-paper example. I recently added their July 4th page, too. Average daily circulation for The Herald: 31,600.

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A SAMPLING OF A1 STORY PLAY

A handful of papers found a way to avoid having to promo Batman on A1. They ran a story about Batman on A1. Some, as a lede story.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand: Dude, it’s only a movie. On the other hand: Hey, if it sells papers…

Papers running Batman on A1 included…

THE OREGONIAN
Portland, Ore.

ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL
Albuquerque, N.M.

METRO
New York and Philadelphia

USA Today
Tyson’s Corner, Va.

The Vindicator
Youngstown, Ohio

These guys did a story on a local guy who worked on Batman comic books. Pretty good, except true batfans really, really hate that ‘Holy this’ and ‘Holy that’ stuff.

A few papers worked up A1 stories on local Batman fans.

Kalamazoo Gazette
Kalamazoo, Mich.

Oh, this guy looks very, very creepy…

TribP.M.
Pittsburgh, Pa.

This guy looks less than intimidating…

The Oklahoman
Oklahoma City, Okla.

And OKC split the difference, leading A1 with Heath Ledger and, as secondary art, going with local women dressed up as bat-characters.

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MORE FEATURE TREATMENTS

On with our show…

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THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT and LINK
Norfolk, Va.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this paper. But I thought I’d include them anyway…

The Pilot’s Bob Voros writes:

The Daily Break and Link Batman pages came out today; they look really good. Nick Mrozowski did a great job on the photo-illo and the inside page of Link was very sweet!

Here’s Nick’s illustration in the Friday Pilot:

On the left is what Nick’s illo looked like in Link. On the right is the Joker bio that Bob wrote:

As you can see, poor Bob got a dogleg in the Pilot. His piece got a much better ride in Link:

And here is the Link front page for Friday:

Find more of Nick’s stuff and Bob’s stuff in their respective NewsPageDesigner galleries.

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SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL
Santa Cruz, Calif.

Anthony Solis posted this one:

See more of Anthony’s stuff in his NewsPageDesigner gallery.

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BALL STATE DAILY NEWS
Muncie, Indiana

Shelby Murphy posted this tab cover design:

See more of Shelby’s stuff in her NewsPageDesigner gallery.

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KITSAP SUN
Bremerton, Wash.

Jon Williams calls this one a:

Pretty risky page.

See more of Jon’s stuff in his NewsPageDesigner gallery.

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GWINNETT DAILY POST
Lawrenceville, Ga.

Nicole Puckett posted this tab cover…

…and Tori Boone designed this inside tab spread:

Find Nicole’s stuff and Tori’s stuff in their respective NewsPageDesigner galleries.

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EXPRESO
Matamoros, Mexico

Juan Jose Palma posted this pair of pages:

See more of Juan Jose’s stuff in his NewsPageDesigner gallery.

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VALEPARAIBANO
São José dos Campos, Brazil

Flavio Forner posted this Friday:

See more of Flavio’s stuff in his NewsPageDesigner gallery.

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ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
St. Petersburg, Fla.

St. Pete produced a four-page Batman section in its weekly entertainment tab. Jennifer DeCamp writes:

I wanted to allude to both characters in the movie without having to show each. Fabulous illustration by John Corbitt.

Pages 2&3 of our Batman coverage. John created two more images in the same style as the front, so we wouldn’t have to use traditional movie art.

Page 4 of our Batman coverage. A brief history of the suit.

See more of Jennifer’s stuff in her NewsPageDesigner gallery.

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FLORIDA TIMES-UNION
Jacksonville, Fla.

Patrick Garvin writes:

Here’s the cover of our Weekend section today. Kyzandrha Z. Pratt orchestrated this cover, and Jason Pratt shot and produced a “behind the scenes” video of the process of how this Dark Knight cover came to be.

It’s a fun cover and the video of how they pulled it off was really
interesting.

Click here for the high-definition version or here for the standard version.

You may recall that Jacksonville built one of the more inventive Indiana Jones pages, too. Interesting their solution to The Dark Knight is so damn good as well.

Find more of Kyzandrha’s stuff in her NewsPageDesigner gallery.

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See more Dark Knight pages here and here.

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