Gadhafi's death: Making way for history

About halfway through the day yesterday, I asked on Twitter how newspapers were going to play the death of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi on their Friday front pages. Gadhafi's death was poorly timed for today's school of newspaper thinking. By the time newsrooms were sitting down for their afternoon meetings (actually, morning meetings for the papers on the West Coast), Gadhafi's death was already hours old. For many, the news would be almost a day old by the time Friday's editions hit newsstands. Gadhafi's death is almost to the opposite extreme of Osama bin Laden's death. That news tiptoed deadline close enough to miss some editions or have coverage that relied solely on the wires. Today's newsroom thinking often (and usually rightfully so) focuses on an event with this timing as something that needs to be spun forward and looked at through a "second day" lens.

I'm going to break with that thinking on this kind of event. Newspapers may be playing by different rules than they played with five, ten or twenty years ago, but every so often an event comes along that should cause newsrooms to throw the new rulebook out the window (or, at the very least, let it get lost in a messy reporter's desk for a day or two). Gadhafi had been in power longer than any dictator in the Middle East. He had a long, complicated and often antagonistic relationship with the United States and the Western world. I still believe that newspapers serve the role as keepsakes every so often. On the days when newspapers are called to that responsibility, it's OK to revert to the glory days. The Internet isn't going to sneak up and kill you off in that moment of weakness. Your advertisers aren't going to bail on you. In fact, they'll probably appreciate the spike in circulation. No one is going to print out a Web page or save a recording of CNN on their DVR forever. These moments belong to newspapers.

Newspapers may serve a local audience, but they are also stewards of history. History happens daily, but you can only capture it once. Gadhafi is only going to be captured and killed one time. You have one shot to produce the greatest front page you can and then that's it. You'll probably have 355 more chances to play the local news stories. History though? It's gone after today.

I wanted to start a discussion about a few pages that caught my attention on Newseum today (although, not all for the same reason).

Who did it right?

Well, there was only one paper that completely grabbed me today, and that was the Los Angeles Times. Clean, with an understanding of history. They did what a newspaper should do on a day like this: Get out of the way and let the story sell the page. No Photoshop tricks, no funky backgrounds. The @latimes Twitter account told me that Dan Santos was their lead designer for this page. I don't know Dan, but great job.

I also thought the Chicago Tribune did a nice job. Cleared off the top of the page and let the photo do the work. Stories with art like this will take care of themselves.

Who was close? 

The Hartford Courant did a great job giving the story prominent play on their front page, but I do question the photo. Not because I'm squeamish, but because I do think there's a line of sensationalism that can be crossed when it comes to stories like this. Yes, as a paper of record, it's perfectly respectable to run this kind of photo. Does it need to be your front page centerpiece photo though? On newsstands, there's no way for the public to avoid it.

I really liked where the Bakersfield Californian was going with Friday's front page, but that ad is intrusive. Obviously, in most newsrooms clearing off those ads is out of the question. The play of the photo is strong, but it gets diminished by having the ads drive into it. Instead of designing the ads into the front page presentation, it would have worked better to design around the ad.

Who was interesting?

The Ledger Independent played the Gadhafi story big on it's front page but made the choice to turn the page on its side. Personally, I love when newspapers use this technique, but you have to have the reasoning to back it up. While at my college paper (and when in a few other newsroom discussions), I've repeatedly stressed that I would rather have a designer understand why to do something than how to do something. It's easy to flip a page on its side, but why are you doing it? What does it add to the presentation?

Leave it to one of the New York tabloids to make the Gadhafi story about them. Go Yanks.

Who leaves me with some questions?

 

 

A lot of newspapers seemed to go with large black boxes on their front pages as part of their Gadhafi presentation. I'm not quite sure why. This strikes me as dressing up a story that didn't need dressing up. Am I guilty of doing this on occasion? Of course. It's my belief, though, that a news story doesn't need dressing up.

  

 

Going back to my original point that events like Gadhafi's death deserve the best front pages we can produce and should reorder the news of the day, there were a couple newspapers that played local events with much higher priority than Gadhafi. I love Steve Jobs, but couldn't that story have also done the same thing as a side pocket story? I'm not sure what the "General Plan Update" is, but I'm sure it won't have the same affect on the world as Gadhafi did. Road construction, home prices and employment updates are worthy stories, but they run at least once a week. Remember: History happens daily, but you can only capture it once. You can strip that employment story the next thirty times you run it, but you'll never again have the chance to give the Gadhafi's death attention-grabbing play on your front page.

Newspapers serve their readers in amazing fashion every day. No other type of media does the in-depth, long-form reporting that newspapers can. The term "hyper local" has been drilled into everyone's brains for years now. Every once in awhile, it's OK to forget all of that. In fact, it's more than OK — it should be mandatory. Don't let these opportunities pass you by.