Thanksgiving morning found me at the St. Petersburg Times‘ “Turkey Trot,” a 1-mile, 5K and 10K run through Clearwater, Fla. I’ve never run a 5K before, but that’s what the family does every year, so what the heck.
Archive for November, 2007
Today’s mail included the Society of News Design’s 28th annual “Best of Newspaper Design” annual. It blew me away.
The first thing I noticed was that it’s much thicker than last year’s. Then, I noticed a lot of names I knew, which makes me feel like the world gets smaller every day. (It does.)
Then I read an opening statement, about how 2007 was so bad for newspapers, but the visuals are as good as they’ve ever been. And you know what? It was, and they are.
This year has been horrid for newspapers. There’ve been a lot of good journalists, even a few great ones, sidelined this year, thanks to budget cuts or newsroom moves. There’s a lot of journalists going through downsizing or massive shifts in responsibilities. And somehow, that daily miracle ends up on people’s doorsteps, with a radiance and a focus on great storytelling that’s better than ever.
From The New York Times’s massive period to the perennial showing of Virginian-Pilot, Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press pages and exhibits from lots of papers with “La,” “Die” and “El” in their names, to some unbelievably good graphics, compelling photography, this year’s book no doubt sets a high mark for the industry — both in terms of quality of work and amount of quality work.
For newspapers, the good old days are past, and yet to come again. But for newspaper design, these are the good old days.
They turned off the Kleig lights on Bob Costas and Keith Olbermann for Nov. 5’s NBC Sunday-night NFL broadcast, when if NBC Universal really wanted to save energy, they’d have said what Dan Rather rightly said during the Clinton impeachment, then turned off the cameras for the night. What Rather said:
Go get the story from a good local newspaper.
At least the newspaper wouldn’t cram enviro-political dogma down your throat when all you want is football. (Unless, of course, you have to get through the op-ed pages to get to sports, but at least you can ignore it.)
What did the token gesture from NBC on that brodcast really do, other than give the guys at ESPN something to make fun of during Monday Night Football (which they did)?
Continue reading ‘If NBC really, really wanted to go green…’
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