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Charles Apple: The Visual Side of Journalism

 

‘Innovative ideas’ archive

Number of comments in parentheses

Feb. 6: How does a college paper shake up its content for a cool new Friday edition?

The hugely talented Greg Mees — visual managing editor for the student paper at Colorado State University, Rocky Mountain Collegian — wrote me a week or so ago. Greg wrote: We are just getting back into the swing of things here at the Collegian for the spring semester and, with that, we have launched the Weekender. This is our new [...]

Feb. 6: Mario Garcia on obstacles to creativity (1)

News design consultant Mario Garcia on creativity: At the end of the day, the environment in which we all work is either encouraging towards creative pursuits (with all its risks and advantages), or hostile towards it. One thing is for sure, in almost every project I have been involved the past 40 years, there has always been some of the two.  [...]

Feb. 3: Cool idea alert: Printable Valentine’s Day cards

Chris Morris of the Cleveland Plain Dealer tells us about his latest project: I figured my kids didn’t want to hand out Spongebob and Buzz Lightyear store-bought cards. So I drew up 30 quirky little cards and we’re making them available online as PDFs. Kids can download and print and cut out to their heart’s content. Chris drew six cards [...]

Feb. 2: USA Today offers do-it-yourself paper figures of Tom Brady and Eli Manning

USA Today this week offered up do-it-yourself paper action figures of Super Bowl quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning. The figures are posted on USA Today‘s web site. Readers click to download PDF files of each player. There are instructions and even a video that shows how to assemble each player. The faces are drawn by USA Today‘s Sam Ward. [...]

Jan. 27: This couple is grateful someone didn’t doublecheck his email address

While its seems, sometimes, that the whole world needs a copy editor, Rachel and Ruben Salazar are glad some folks don’t doublecheck their email addresses before they hit “send.” If they had doublechecked, then Rachel and Ruben would have never met and fallen in love. Enjoy: That was posted today at Mediaite. In addition to the heartwarming story, here’s another [...]

Jan. 25: The future of advertising (1)

The John St. agency has the answer. Enjoy. Thanks to the awesome Jean Trumbo for sharing this today via Facebook. Previously: The future of advertising and media

Jan. 23: Don’t just sit there and snooze during tonight’s debate. Play ‘Presidential Bingo.’

I can’t promise you tonight’s GOP debate (begins 9 p.m EST on NBC) will have quite the fireworks that we saw Thursday in South Carolina. Come to think of it, I can’t even guarantee you’ll stay awake for the whole thing. That’s why you need some added entertainment incentive. In addition to taking a drink every time Newt Gingrich gets [...]

Jan. 19: Two fun ways to cover the Great Online Protest Blackout of 2012

The great Online Protest Blackout of 2012 has come and gone. A number of papers played story on the front of page one Wednesday — the actual day of the protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act and related legislation — and a few more played it up today, the day after. The most interesting blackout page I saw today [...]

Jan. 6: A smart way to reach out to your social media audience (2)

You’ve seen the new Facebook “timeline,” format right? It lays out your Facebook home page — or “wall” — a little differently, with a huge, horizontally-cropped picture across the top and then a smaller “profile” mug shot below. Here is the way mine looks at this very moment: For my “cover picture” — as Facebook calls it — I chose [...]

Dec. 25, 2011: Twelve wonderful Christmas Day front pages

In honor of the Twelve Days of Christmas, here are the 12 most outstanding newspaper front pages as seen today at the Newseum… — PLAIN DEALER Cleveland, Ohio Circulation: 243,299 The Plain Dealer sent its outstanding photography team out into the area and asked them to take Christmas card-like pictures. The best — by Lynn Ischay — ended up atop [...]

Dec. 22, 2011: Cool idea: Sunday Times publishing iPad-only edition on Christmas Day

In 1912, writes Arif Durrani of UK Media Week, the Sunday Times of London started a tradition of not publishing on Christmas Day. The idea, of course: To give employees the day off. (A secondary benefit, perhaps: We’ve found, over the years, that single-copy sales pretty much suck on holidays. But let’s not go there right now.) The Times of [...]

Dec. 15, 2011: Yet another extraordinary Victoria Advocate poster front

An extraordinary poster front illustration today occupied the front of today’s Victoria Advocate. And when I say “poster front,” I mean a single-topic front page that consists primarily of a visual. In fact, this page looks more like a movie poster than a newspaper front page. Click for a much, much larger look. That is a photo illustration by Julie [...]

Dec. 14, 2011: Happy provocative Christmas from St. Matthews-in-the-City Church

St. Matthews-in-the-City Church — an Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand — apparently like to stir folks up at Christmas. Two years ago, the church put up this billboard for the Holidays. As you might imagine, that didn’t go over too well. After the billboard was attacked three times in two days, the church had it taken down. Well, St. Matthews [...]

Dec. 12, 2011: Merry #*$%! Christmas from the Victoria Advocate (2)

Check out the magazine-treatment front of today’s Victoria (Texas) Advocate. Click for a closer look: Multimedia editor/illustrator Robert Zavala tells us: The story is a Pro-Con on using “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” as a greeting. People get really worked up about this, so I thought I’d give the cover a humorous slant. Yes, we are getting phone calls. Find [...]

Dec. 8, 2011: The Guardian tracks the spread of rumors via Twitter

Fascinating stuff in today’s Guardian on the role of social media in the English riots earlier this year. James Ball of the Guardian writes: The role of Twitter and Facebook in the Arab spring – though arguably overstated – was widely praised, at least in the west, and led to eager debate on the world such technologies were enabling. The [...]

Dec. 7, 2011: A missed marketing opportunity for Politico?

If I were Politico, I’d buy the rights to this photo posted today via Twitter… …and use it in an advertising campaign. With a headline like: Politico: Supporting Occupy D.C. since, oh, about 1 p.m. this afternoon… But then again, that’s why I don’t work in marketing. Thanks to the folks at Poynter for retweeting the pic.

Dec. 7, 2011: Tips on how to handle page-one headlines and other display copy (successfully) on deadline (3)

Over the past week, I’ve shown you two front pages from the Ledger of Lakeland, Fla. — pages that contained fatal errors in “big type” on page one.   Last Thursday, the Ledger used the word “Medicare” in its lead headline. The problem was: The story was about Medicaid. Today’s error seemed ever worse. The lead story was about a [...]

Dec. 6, 2011: Karl Gude on the creative process (1)

If there’s one person on the planet who could sum up the creative process into one Venn diagram and make it actually meaningful — as opposed to trite or silly — it’d be Michigan State überinstructor Karl Gude. The man has been teaching “the creative process” this semester. As that semester draws to a close, Karl posts this to his [...]

Dec. 6, 2011: So just how small IS a “super compact,” anyway?

And, speaking of Cincinnati… My esteemed consulting colleague* Ron Reason has been doing some work lately at the Cincinnati Enquirer. Which, in case you haven’t heard, is planning to shrink its daily paper to what’s called the “super compact” format. The change won’t happen for ten more months yet. But that’s not stopped the Enquirer — and the Louisville Design [...]

Dec. 6, 2011: Another novel idea: Promote your paper by promoting your reporting staff (2)

A few days ago, I told you about a newspaper group that was investing money in its reporting staff and in technology that could really help them do their jobs. Including not only the gizmos but money to pay them for their time to learn the gizmos. Here’s another novel idea and one that might help show the path we [...]

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