Today's BFD should have come from Florida or Ohio with first-class display of the Florida-Ohio State game last night. But most designers in the Buckeye and Sunshine states turned their pages into posters, in many cases pushing the players' faces beneath fold.



Look at these pages side by side, remarkable in their similarity. These pages may look great on a wall, but lousy in a newspaper vending box. (See related story about the Hartford Courant and single-copy sales.) Even if we believe that readers want us to turn our front pages into commemorative posters, I doubt that anyone in Ohio will be adorning their homes with these pages. Which begs the question, "Who are we designing for?"

A stunningly different, and more practical approach to Front-page design is today's Virginian-Pilot, with its graceful display of relevant and useful content.

The image and text above the fold is all the talk in Virginia – the weather. The package beneath the fold uses short form and parallel construction to explain three aspects of proposed tax changes. The futuristic spacecraft appears elegantly surrounded by white space.

The Virginian-Pilot served its readers this morning with stories that are local, relevant, compelling, interesting and useful. Readers in Ohio and Florida weren't served as well by front pages that merely announced what everyone learned last night. It makes no sense to report old news.

From Nicole Bogdas, The Palm Beach Post

First, let me thank you for creating a new, relevant and thought-provoking new daily destination for me. I don't always agree, but you make me think!

Speaking of not agreeing...a couple of points.

You laud the Pilot for prominantly displaying the talk of Virginia (the weather), but ignore the fact that Florida and Ohio did the same. That said, I agree that there are other readers who need to be served. One of the reasons I chose Orlando as my pick of Florida papers yesterday at my blog (and I didn't say this, but perhaps I should have) was that they included refers to other top stories at the bottom of 1A.

Also, I often ask the "who are we designing for" question, but in this case, I do think it's for more than design's sake. Newspapers are straddling an odd line right now with trying to keep up with new reader wants and needs while also keeping their status as a paper of record. There are but a few instances left where newspapers really need to act like newspapers of old. I think this is one of those times. People look to newspapers when events like this happen as keepsakes--there is still a want for tangible posterity. (The other instance where traditional newspaper thinking is still relevant is during a disaster such as the Florida hurricanes of 04-05 and the recent storms in the Northwest and Colorado.) That being said, I don't agree that a poster page in this instance is necessarily a bad decision.

You recently applauded the Grand Rapids paper for doing essentially the same thing with Gerald Ford, and certainly on the old scale of newspaper importance that was justified, so why isn't this? Because it's the death of a former president vs. sports? I'd argue that more people cared about the BCS than Ford's death and that poster presentations of Ford's death plays to the older, dying readership while the Florida Ohio pages are more oriented toward the demographic we're targeting to keep us alive.

Plus, there's always the old arugment that the game ended late and the paper was the first place many people saw the score. In the grand scheme, though, I don't buy that argument because if you really cared you watched the game and if you didn't watch the game you were marginally interested and therefore could wait until the Sports section to find out that info. But I'm getting into another whole set of peeves with that comment.

Thanks again for a thought-provoking post.



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