If you live in or near Rockford, Ill., and you walked past an edition of the Register Star, how could you not stop and take a closer look at this page?

The big news, of course, was the epic drop in the Dow Jones industrials. The Star's package includes a label-style headline with a question that asks "How did we get here?", followed by a timeline of debt ceiling talks that took place since the end of July.

This is a fantastic way to tell this story for a couple reasons.

First of all, everyone with a TV, radio, cell phone or computer likely already had known about the drop. So today, the Star wisely chose to give readers the "why" in format that can be quickly digested. The story of the stalled debt ceiling talks that went on for what seemed weeks went stale after lawmakers finally reached a deal. To recap the issue in this nontraditional manner just makes sense.

Secondly, the information presented here in meaty, though bite-sized morsels, all put against a giant red, downward-pointng arrow is going to make people stop, look and read. No long-form story gets in the way of the information. Each dated piece in the timelline is puncuated with the Dow's closing number for that day, increasing in size on the way down emphasizing the magnitude of the trending spiral. No photos of unknown traders doing a face palm are needed here. Can't get a much more powerful visual than that red arrow.

There's a lot of information out on this front page. Informative content promotions tell readers where they can find more.

Love this page! Nice work.

Joe Greco is corporate design director for GateHouse Media.
Contact him at jgreco@gatehousemedia.com.

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