Many of today's front pages continued to show the mourning(cq) after the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech.
Some papers put a human face on this tragedy:
The Orange County Register, the
San Jose Mercury News, The Bakersfield Californian.
Some papers continued to fail to inform: The
St. Petersburg Times went "seeking answers" but its six-column photo (which burned up almost the half the page) provided none.
RedEye went big with a visual "portrait of a killer" but provided no meaningful information to illuminate the portrait.
Newsday did the same thing. The
Philadelphia Daily News' photomontage was poorly handled and just plain creepy.
In contrast, the
San Antonio Express-News used its page to inform instead of making yet another poster out of this story. To its great credit,
The Forum seemed to be the only newspaper to ask the right question. Well done!
The newspaper with the best front design today is The Virginian-Pilot, for lack of a better description, for being The Virginian-Pilot.
Again and again and again, The Pilot shows the rest of the industry – and the rest of the world – how to raise newspapering to a high art, with pages that are truly moving. It's a pity other newspapers haven't caught on. Only the Pilot repeatedly approaches poetry in its storytelling.
No other paper speaks so powerfully, so eloquently, so often.
Dwelling on the details of this page misses the point. But one detail worthy of note – the care taken with the solitary piece of art on this page: The memorial ribbon at the top of the page is a weave of Virginia Tech's school colors.
Link got it right yesterday. The Pilot took it up yet a notch today. Norfolk, VA is the world's capital for newspaper design today.
Now get busy and move the capital to your town.
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