You saw the news today, right? The jury in the trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich returned a guilty verdict on one count but deadlocked on 23 others. This trial is nowhere close to being over.
Illinois papers were all over it, as you’d expect. The following pages are from my daily sweep of the archive at the Newseum.
The best presentation of the day was by the Chicago Tribune‘s free commuter tab, RedEye. The photo — by Tribune staffer Chris Walker — is fabulous enough but man, check out that headline:
RedEye‘s Trent Koland tells us:
The designer of the cover was our very own Sara Stewart and the headline (we think!) was done by one of our reporters, Kyra Kyles. It’s hard to remember who came up with the head since we were in a pretty intense brainstorming session and the heads were flying. We had a pretty intense discussion at the end of the night as to what head we were going to use. We ended up using Guilty-ish because we thought it would make us stand out from all of the other newspapers in the city. And it was funny as hell.
It was indeed, Trent. Thanks for the info. RedEye‘s average daily distribution is somewhere around 250,000 copies.
The headline on the front of today’s Sun-Times — circulation 268,803 — was nearly as great:
The photo — by staffer Keith Hale — was slightly less dramatic than RedEye‘s, but still pretty good. If anyone out there in Sun-Times land can slip me the name of the designer, I’d be much obliged.
The Chicago Tribune stacked huge decks atop A1 today, which proved to be an effective choice. Normally, I’d ask to see the photo pushed a little higher but today, that hardly seemed necessary:
The page was designed by Alan Johnson and Steve Cavendish, we’re told. The photo is by staffer Terrence Antonio James. The credits are the same for the Trib‘s single-copy tabloid front as well:
Average daily circulation for the Tribune is 452,145.
Across the state line in Indiana, the Times of Munster — circulation 83,680 — used much stronger language for its headline, to shocking effect:
The lead photo is a very, very tight crop of a photo by the Associated Press’ Kiichiro Sato.
Between that main hed and the headline on the column — Send Blago to prison and be done with it – you almost feel like you’re reading an opinion page. But, of course, it’s not: That one lone conviction was for lying to federal agents. So the Liar, liar hed does indeed fit the story.
I gotta admit, I’m not sure I would have had the guts to run that. Kudos to Munster. I think.
The Northwest Herald of Crystal Lake — circulation 36,594 — downplayed its nameplate and played up more strong language in its headline today:
The lead art was by far the most popular of the day, by AP’s Sato. You’ll see a bunch of papers using that shot. The Herald was one of three papers running it the width of the front.
The News-Democrat of Belleville — circulation 53,053 — used that same photo with nearly the same crop. The interesting thing here is the word “deadlock,” ghosted in grey 23 times behind the main headline. Note the word “guilty” ghosted in red at the end of that copy block:
Normally, I advise designers to stay away from such gimmicky type treatments. But, by golly, Belleville nearly pulls it off here. An exception to the rule, perhaps?
My only suggestion would be to increase the leading between the four lines of ghosted copy to help the top of the first line and the baseline of the bottom line square off with the two main decks.
The State Journal Register of Springfield — circulation 50,071 — cropped in tight on that same photo for its own huge A1 play today:
The downside here: It bugs me slightly to see Blagojevich’s wife’s head sliced off in mid-cheek. The upside: If you haven’t seen the photo, then that cropped cheek probably doesn’t really leap out at you. After all, very few readers in Springfield are sifting through similar play of that same picture today via the Newseum, most likely.
Credit for the design goes to copy editor Katie Davis, we’re told.
The Register-Mail of Galesburg — circulation 12,500 — took the same Do-over headline approach as the Sun-Times and used the same AP photo as the last several papers:
Observations here:
1) This might have been a good day to dispense with the rail and play up the big news of the day. I see very little in that right-side rail that would sell more papers than Blago.
2) The Register-Mail might consider dropping that huge drop-shadow to the right and bottom of the tint box in the lead package. I don’t mind an unobtrusive little tint box. But man, that thing is huge.
The Daily Herald of Arlington Heights — circulation 111,539 — took the photo down to four columns:
The page was designed by copy editor Jaime Swanson. News editor Neil Holdway tells us:
I should say, copy editor Sean Stangland played a role, too, with this front, most notably with the label at the top – The U.S. vs. Rod Blagojevich – which helped us keep his long name out of the main headlines.
My only complaint here is that the head in the secondary photo is awfully close in size to the two folks in the lead photo. I’d suggest shrinking that smaller photo down a bit to reduce the competition.
The Register Star of Rockford — circulation 46,185 — kept the focus on what’s next:
The page was designed by Marv Clemons.
And the Journal Star of Peoria — circulation 61,028 — also led with that same Sato lead art:
The Daily Chronicle of DeKalb — circulation 9,350 — used an alternate shot from presumably that same photographer. In particular, I like the headline here:
The Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa — circulation 52,684 — pulled back a bit to give us a dramatic view of the Blagojeviches surrounded by reporters and photographers:
Not over yet, says the headline afront today’s Spanish-language Tribune product, Hoy:
The photo — from Getty images — is one of the least effective front-page shots of the day, wouldn’t you agree?
Average daily distribution of Hoy is about 60,000 copies.
The Kane County Chronicle of Geneva — circulation 12,226 — tried to squeeze a little too much onto its front page today:
The Blago package by itself is pretty decent. But then that very busy fair art, plus the overlapping text, plus five lines of text, plus the very, very busy ad below it makes for a noisy front page.
Perhaps one of the more interesting A1 photo choices was this one by the News-Gazette of Champaign:
Guilty on one count, the headline screams. But Blago appears to be flashing a “zero” sign to the reporters below. This photo — credited to an AP shooter named Eric Y. Exit — demonstrates why it’s difficult to build dramatic pages around square-shaped pictures. Better to find a vertical or horizontal, I think.
Also, that’s a lot of text in the lead package. I think the quotes are a little long and the sidebar at right is something that might have been better played inside.
Finally, the Dispatch of Moline — circulation 31,752 — and the Argus of Rock Island — circulation 12,558 — also chose awkward AP shots of Blagojevich for A1 play today:
While I don’t think the composition of this picture is worthy of lead A1 treatment, at least the square shape played well. The designer might have tried a grid approach for the man-on-the-street material midpage, however.
Most of the pages shown here are from the Newseum.
That Belleville page is a swing and a miss. Maybe in print that shadow type would not be as distracting, but why in the world would you mess with your lead headline on a day like this? It’s design for the sake of design, and it does little to nothing to aid the presentation.
Also, the cutline refers to Blago as the current governor. Wrong. And the secondary headline and the info under Fitzgerald’s mug shot say virtually the same thing.
On a non-Blago note, the bottom headline for the Dispatch/Argus is potentially confusing at first glance. “Waits” can be a noun or a verb, so using it at the end of the deck in that construction is a potential flaw.
The DeKalb paper got Blago’s first name wrong. This wasn’t mentioned yesterday.
Not to disagree with you or anything, Robert, but I presume you’re referring to the middle refer at the top of the DeKalb page.
Unless I’m mistaken, that’s referring to Rod Blagojevich’s brother, Robert Blagojevich. Four counts against him all resulted in a hung jury. So it’s clear to me that is to what that refer, uh, refers.
I think that might have been much more clear had the designer used “Robert” instead of “Rob.” So I’d agree with you there.
He is almost never referred to as “Rob” in most news articles, though. Columnists do it to sound witty, but that’s the extent I can see from the first two pages of Googling.
Also, as big as designers are about all things “above the fold,” I would say that reference is unnecessarily unclear.
So it’s apparently not wrong, but the way it’s set up, plus the context, does give that appearance at first glance.