"Happy New Year" was proclaimed across the top of many front pages on this first day of 2007 – as if anyone needed the newspaper for this vital information. The promotional value of this announcement was nil, particularly from a single-copy standpoint. But the
San Jose Mercury News made better use of this space than any other paper by using this strip as a key to inside stories. Overall, their page was one of the best.
But the big story today was the grim landmark of 3,000 Americans dead in Iraq. Some papers played this big, while others made this appear like just another news story. Some used a large headline with a small image and others did just the opposite. The most powerful combination of headline and image appeared in Decatur, Alabama at The Decatur Daily.
The words we choose for a headline determine its stength, meaning and effectiveness. Sometimes the most powerful part of a headline is not a word at all. For today's top story, the power was in a number: 3,000. Papers that played up this number did the best job of communicating the true meaning of today's news. The St. Petersburg Times was one of the few papers that neglected this most telling detail in the main head, opting for "Attacks taking a toll on U.S," a headline that could run almost any day of the week.
The Decatur Daily came up with a powerful combination of headline and image, and was the only paper to use such a stirring photo. The cover of
The Rocky Mountain News used a similar headline and image to produce the most elegant treatment of the Iraqi death toll story. But their presentation was almost too pretty for such a gritty story and lacked the emotional impact of Decatur's front.
The Hartford Courant had the most evocative headline – "EVERY DAY, THEY'RE DYING" – and used a chart to show the death toll month by month. So did
The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Decatur is starting off the new year right by demonstrating that Best Front Design need not be the exclusive province of large papers. Every paper, no matter what size, possesses the most powerful design tool: the creativity of its staff.
Comments from Mark A. Dodge Medlin, San Diego Union-Tribune:
Hey Alan. Just wanted to let you know that BFD has become one of my daily stops. Very nice work.
The Decatur page is pretty powerful, although I thought the Merc did a better job of capturing both the solemnity of what everybody seems to be calling a grim milestone and the joy of a new year. Also, Decatur dimmed its star a bit with that godawful clip art "Happy New Year" banner. There's a lot of that going around on Newseum today.
I give points for creativity to The State, which has a very pretty year-in-preview front. And The Pilot did a refreshing year in review at the top of the page: Instead of rehashing the Most Important Stories of the year, it listed the 10 most popular stories from its Web site. No. 1 is all those bags of Doritos that washed up on the shores of the Outer Banks.
• Agree, disagree or have a nomination for the next BFD?
Send it
• Some recent BFDs appear below.
See all