See what you think about this…
The main photo by Star-Ledger staffer Jerry McCrea is a bit of a head-scratcher. A woman mopping the sidewalk. Immediately, you’re curious.
The story carries no headline at all. Instead, the centerpiece package on page one begins with large text — the lede of the story.
Now, see if that photo — plus this big-text lede-in by reporters Abram Brown and James Queally — doesn’t hook you:
With a long-handled broom in one hand and a bucket in the other, Yvette Graves walked down South Orange Avenue yesterday afternoon to scrub her 13-year-old son’s blood from a cracked sidewalk.
As she poured water from the bucket onto the stained concrete, her friend added bleach to the solution, making it bubble and foam. Graves scrubbed methodically with the broom until there was nothing left.
“My poor, poor baby,” she said. “I wish they’d beaten him up instead. They didn’t have to kill him.”
That’s powerful stuff on the front page of today’s Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. Here’s how it looked all together.
Assistant managing editor Mark Miller tells us:
That was our regular page one designer, Joe Lee.
Editor Kevin Whitmer challenged him to come up with something unconventional that made the most of the best three grafs in the paper. Joe’s idea was simple: Make readers see those first three grafs first. It’s such an odd look one of our other designers pointed out you absolutely have to read it. So mission accomplished.
It won’t win any headline contest though.
Perhaps so. But I’d say the reader doesn’t miss the headline at all. This works perfectly well. I’d agree, however, that you couldn’t get away with this every day.
Average circulation for the Star-Ledger is 229,255.
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Earlier, I posted four other outstanding Tuesday morning front pages. I think you can see, however, why I held this one out for special notice.
The page image is from the Newseum. Of course.
I agonized for a long time over what font to use once I had decided to run the first three grafs in lieu of a headline. I ended up using our regular body copy font bulked up. For a while I was going without the initial cap, instead using the mug shot in that spot. I also went through a long phase where the second graf was in cranberry. I liked the look as it broke up the darkness nicely – but went away from it in fear it would seem trite to go red there.
Thanks for the kind comments, I knew I was taking a chance on the layout, but thankfully Kevin Whitmer (our Editor) has a design philosphy summed up – in his own words – as “bring me something I will say no to.”
Joe Lee Jr.