Great work continued today on the nation’s front pages, in response to the events Wednesday in Chile. The miners were all pulled out, hours ahead of schedule.
It’s not all that often we have good news to splash all over page one. So it was fun to watch papers cut loose this week.
Here are the most notable of today’s fronts, as found in the daily archive at the Newseum.
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BEST PAGES OF THE DAY
Best play of the day, I think, was by my former colleagues at the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk. The Pilot downplayed its nameplate, ran its best photo huge and included a brief timeline and two stories with its page-one package:
The Pilot gets bonus points for its local angle: A locally-based NASA scientist who helped work out the technical details of the rescue capsule and the rescue itself. Find the story here by staffer Corinne Reilly.
The photo is of the 18th miner rescued and was shot by Hugo Infante of the Chilean government.
Average daily circulation for the Virginian-Pilot is 164,454.
The Chicago Tribune‘s free commuter tab, RedEye, used that same picture out front and paired it with one of the better headlines I’ve seen this week:
Nicely done. Average daily distribution for RedEye is 250,000.
And the World-Herald of Omaha, Neb., also used that same photo — downpage, just below an interesting story about cell phone signals being jammed during football gamedays:
Most interesting, however, is the rail down the left side of the page, containing a measure to approximate the width of the rescue capsule, à la yesterday’s Times of London graphic.
As you can see, though, the page wasn’t quite deep enough to pull it off:
It was an interesting approach, though — kind of a double-reverse bootleg, with a centerpiece photo attached to a left-side rail. You don’t see that attempted very often. I think the World-Herald pulled it off pretty well.
Average daily circulation for the World-Herald is 153,340.
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PICTURE OF THE DAY
My favorite photo anywhere today is this one by the Chilean government’s Hugo Infante:
It’s a bit downpage, but it was still used large by the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.:
Average daily circulation for the Star-Ledger is 236,017.
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OODLES OF MUGS
A number of papers today elected to run mugs of each of the miners.
The most outstanding of these today was by the Tribune of Salt Lake City, circulation 112,585:
I also like that headline, which played off the numbers.
Speaking of headlines, I found this one — also on a mug-shot-themed page — amusing:
That is the Ledger Independent of Maysville, Ky., circulation only 8,174.
Nicely done, Maysville.
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HEADLINE OF THE DAY
My favorite was this one, afront the Oregonian of Portland:
The lead photo is by Natacha Pisarenko of the Associated Press. Average daily circulation for the Oregonian is 263,600.
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THE NYC TABS
And, to the surprise of no one, the New York City tabs found the most grotesque part of the story on which to obsess: The miner who had his girlfriend, rather than his wife, greet him upon his exit:
Average daily circulation for the Post is 525,004. Average daily circulation for the Daily News is 535,0059.
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CHILEAN NEWSPAPERS
Here’s how the Chilean paper of record — el Mercurio of Santiago, circulation 120,000 — played the story today:
It’s credited to Gobierno, but that art appears to be a screen grab. Doesn’t make for well-reproducing news pages, that’s for sure. Interesting how Mercurio ran thumbnails of papers worldwide across the top of the page, though.
The populist paper in Santiago — las Últimaas Noticias, circulation 150,000 — also led with the final miner freed:
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SOUTH AFRICAN NEWSPAPERS
Last night, my good friend Andries Gouws — the designer of Johannesburg’s Beeld — sent me three pages from today’s edition. Given that Johannesburg is a huge mining town — it was built atop gold mines, you might recall — I thought it’d be fun to show you how the mining disaster was covered in a city that is arguably the mining capital of the world:
That headline says:
Out and about!
‘I knew God would help us!’
The lead photo is yet another shot by Hugo Infante.
Andries also sent me two inside pages. By deadline — keep in mind South Africa is six hours ahead of Eastern Time in the U.S. — only 24 miners had been rescued. Still, Beeld presented a small photo and a brief sentence on each miner.
Andries tells us:
For instance: No. 8 – He requested cigarettes being sent down but received nicotine patches at first. He was not amused.
No. 21: He had a wife and a lover waiting above ground. The lover welcomed him first. His wife didn’t pitch up “since he also invited that other woman”.
Average daily circulation for Beeld is 106,000.
While I’m at it, here is the front of today’s Times, a weekday English-language paper also based in Johannesburg:
The photo by Hugo Infante is of the 10th miner rescued.
And here is the Mercury of Durban, which added a rail of emotion shots down the right side and employed a great headline:
Average daily circulation for the Mercury is 35,002.
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All of the pages above — with the exception of the Beeld pages — are from the Newseum.
Go here to read my critique of Wednesday’s Chilean rescue fronts.
