Charles Apple

There were a few notable treatments today regarding the BP oil spill story on front pages posted at the Newseum.

The best — and simplest — was the one on A1 of today’s USA Today, showing the actual size of the pipe that’s doing all of the leaking:

Here is just the graphic part of that package. Click for a larger view:

The piece was uncredited. Average daily circulation for USA Today is 1.8 million. Find USA Today’s online oil spill coverage here.

The slick is less than ten miles from the pure-white sands of Pensacola Beach. I spent a lot of time on that beach while working on a special project for Gannett in 2003. It just sickens me that the place will likely get slimed badly this weekend.

Ron Stallcup of the Pensacola News Journal is all over the story, with a detailed map of the area and showing the approach of the oil:

A closer look at Ron’s map:

Find the lead story here by Troy Moon and Kim Blair. Average daily circulation for the News Journal is 65,360.

Next up is the News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla., circulation 79,901. When I spotted this tall graphic rail, I thought we might have some kind of interesting scale piece on our hands:

However, the piece actually shows relative ocean depths.

The leaky pipe is way up there were the solid dotted line is shown. Everything beneath that line shows superlative depths of the ocean floor at points around the world.

In other words, the bottom three-quarters of this graphic has nothing at all to do with this story.

A closer look:

Interesting stuff. But hardly worth the front page. The graphic is uncredited.

I’m also not crazy about this next front page — the Press-Register of Mobile, Ala., circulation 108,298. There are way too many headlines above the fold here, all screaming for our attention.

I show it, however, purely because of the outrage factor of that main story:

The Press-Register’s Rena Havner Philips reports:

Gov. Bob Riley complained that there are hundreds of private boats ready to get out in the waters with skimmers to try to protect the shoreline from oil. But they’re waiting on authorization from the U.S. Coast Guard to be able to do so.

Master Chief Petty Officer Pete Capelotti said that though people are getting nervous as they see oil clumps come ashore, it’s not time yet to deploy all of the skimmers.

Eligible boats operators have been vetted by BP and have gone through safety training. He said oil, as it moves from the underwater drill site to the surface and toward the shore, takes on many different forms and that those operating skimmers must be trained on how to handle each of those types.

“It’s not a situation where any boat anywhere can go out and do it,” Capelotti said. “It’s a very targeted procedure.”

I don’t know, folks. Seems like everything BP is trying to contain or stop the leak has failed. And neither BP nor the Coast Guard is enabling folks to help. The only thing BP and the Coast Guard has done effectively is to keep the media from photographing the worst of it.

Find the Press-Register story here.

Also, I’m getting a lot of e-mail directing me to this, purportedly from a 1999 BP ad campaign:

Yes, very amusing. But fake. From 1979 to 2000, BP used a different logo than it does today:

Find previous posts about oil spill coverage…

• MAY 5: The oil slick is an opportunity for some slick graphics.
• MAY 21: The Miami Herald charted estimates of the amount of the spill.
• MAY 27: USA Today ran a front-page scale diagram showing the depth of the leaking pipe.
• MAY 29: Headlines and presentations varied wildly on the effectiveness of BP’s latest efforts.
• JUNE 2: A cool site helps you understand the size of the spill.

—
UPDATE

I don’t know about you, but I’ve really enjoyed the hilariously snarky BPGlobalPR Twitter feed:

• As part of our continued re-branding effort, we are now referring to the spill as “Shell Oil’s Gulf Coast Disaster”.
• Due to public outcry, our “Spill Or Be Spilled” flash game will be taken off our BP Kidz Klub website. “Smack the Greasy Manatee” stays.
• We are very upset that Operation: Top Kill has failed. We are running out of cool names for these things.
• We are very sorry, but due to an increased amount of accidental immolations, all beach volleyball tournaments are now non-smoking.

The guy behind the tweets issued a press release today. Find it here. Thanks to Ernie Smith for tweeting the link.

You think of USA Today as being the home of the huge mega-graphic, but how often do you see one on page one?

Not that often. The front page of USA Today is tightly formatted, leaving no room for a huge visual. Notable exceptions are things like election day or 9/11, when the format is tossed in favor of a huge gee-whiz photo.

That’s why today’s front page is so notable. USA Today ran a huge diagram of the entire oil spill scene including the “top kill” procedure underway right now, all drawn to scale:

Right away, you can see the danger. If they had drilled just a bit further, they would have hit a giant wristwatch. Egads!

Seriously, though, the graphic is by USA Today staffers Bob Laird and Robert Ahrens. Here’s a closer view:

And early reports today are that the procedure is working. Not only has the “top kill” — which consists of basically stuffing mud back down the pipe — stemmed the flow of oil into the Gulf, the Coast Guard and BP have been successful in stemming the flow of news out of the Gulf as well.

Amazing how that works.

Find today’s USA Today oil spill story here. Go here to find USA Today’s directory of oil spill coverage.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has posted an updated interactive map showing where oil slicks have made landfall in Louisiana. Check it out here. Find an animated day-by-day oil slick tracker here.

I’ve written previously about oil spill graphics here and here.

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture photo blog continues to produce the very best collections of oil spill photos. Here is the Big Picture’s Monday entry, focusing on landfall pictures. The May 12 piece was very good as well. Find the Big Picture’s home here.

USA Today art director Ron Coddington has moved from Tyson’s Corner to downtown D.C. with an appointment as assistant managing editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A 1985 graduate of the University of Georgia, Ron spent three years as an illustrator for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and then three more years as assistant art director for the San Jose Mercury News before joining Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services in 1992 as an illustrator. He was promoted to art director in 1994 and helped with the launch of KRT’s Faces in the News caricature service and KRT interactive. In 2000, he moved to USA Today.

In addition, Ron has written two books about the Civil War…

• Faces of the Civil War (2004)
  
• Faces of the Confederacy (2008)

…as well as a monthly column for Civil War News magazine. Find his Civil War site here and his portfolio site here.

Ron’s last day at USA Today was May 14. Here is the autographed caricature — drawn by longtime USA Today artist, designer and manager Jeff Dionise — presented to him then:

The Chronicle of Higher Education is a weekly that covers college and university-level education. The staff also publishes a biweekly, Chronicle of Philanthropy and, of course, online sites for both. Find the Chronicle here.