A look at Wednesday’s front pages
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010From my daily spin through the world’s front pages posted at the Newseum…
I love the horizontal play of these five American oil executives atop today’s Houston Chronicle:
I realize these guys had nothing — nothing at all — to do with the BP oil spill. But man, they sure look guilty of something. This reminds me of some of those Watergate pictures from 40 years ago.
The picture is by Haraz N. Ghanbari of the Associated Press. The Chronicle’s Jesus Maldonado was the designer. The Chronicle circulates 366,578 papers daily.
The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk — circulation 164,454 — ran the same photo but paired with similarly-cropped photos of the president and of the BP ship in the gulf that caught fire after being struck by lightning Tuesday:
The best thing about this page is how the headlines, the “cutlines” and the photos all work to tie together the three main threads of the oil spill story. No one does this better than the Virginian-Pilot.
What I don’t like is the little graphic showing revised estimates of the daily amount of the spill. I don’t mind the circles — which work pretty well this time — but it’s the order that bothers me. I really, really hate the AP style of running the most recent number first. The reader sees that first dot and then sees them getting smaller and smaller. The estimates themselves, of course, are getting larger.
Many, many papers put the spill out front today. Many ran pictures of President Barack Obama during his speech last night. Some ran oil slick aerial pictures. And a number of them ran a picture — by Gerald Herbert of the Associated Press — of a gloved hand holding a glob of oil in Plaquemines Parish, La.
Of these papers, no presentation was cleaner or more effective than the one built by Ben Ramsden of the Pioneer Press of St. Paul, Minn.:
. Normally, I advise folks to stay away from morticing pictures. But this inset of the story and a secondary presidential shot doesn’t bother me.
Average daily circulation for the Pioneer Press is 185,220.
Memo the the Philadelphia Daily News, circulation 110,000: Come on, guys. Tell us what you really think:
This one — a photoillustration by art director Scott McCarthy — is one of my favorite oil spill covers of the year so far, mostly because of the brilliant headline:
“Gulf war.” That’s brilliant.
The illustration was built upon a base photo by Getty Images. The paper, of course, is Express — the commuter tab published by the Washington Post. Express distributes 183,916 copies daily.
Yesterday, I showed you a page from the Oklahoma City paper that used the Big 12 sports conference logo patched together with tape.
Today, the Avalanche-Journal of Lubbock, Texas used a similar idea for that same topic but to much greater effect in its centerpiece spot:
We see masking tape, electrical tape, twine and… Band-Aids? Oh, that’s funny. Note the not-so-subtle editorial comment on the two departing schools at the top, via crumpled paper.
The illustration is credited to staffers Geoffrey McAllister and Zach Long. Average daily circulation for the Avalanche-Journal is 49,094.



















