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I did a doubletake at The Daily Republican's front page today. It's not often you see a ginormous meat cleaver sticking out of the front page, so I was immediately intrigued.
That sharp object is piercing a crumpled piece of paper with the words "Deficit: Jobs, Budget, Classrooms." The illustration, by staffer Tom Kane, is the visual graber for the story on budget cuts for a local scool district. (I would have linked to the story here, but I culdn't find it at the paper's website.)
The story by Bill Swinford details the Marion, Ill., Unit 2 Board of Education's plans to reduce its $7 million deficit. Those plans include cutting a certain number of teachers, which makes the cleaver image a fitting.way to illustrate the story.
The paper recently moved its column-one rail to the bottom to give the news hole six columns. Doing so allowed the image to run at a much larger size than what was possible before the change.
The story has a quite a bit of text out front. What's missing, i think, is a breakout of some kind to give readers, say, bullet points of the cost-cutting plan, a what's next box with more info or perhaps a few quotes and mugs of teachers and or parents reacting to the developments.
Elewhere, the story at right is about a senator's local stop to discuss healthcare issues. At six decks, the headline is way long here. Considerng the label and the summary below the photo, the three-layer headline has 11 decks. Tha't a bit much.
A solution? Use the label for more than just a dateline. Here, the city name is displayed twice — in the label and the main headline. The word healthcare also is seen twice, with the second instance being in the summary.
Layered headline work best when each layer advances the information instead of repeating it.
Still, a really nice page.
Joe Greco is corporate design director for GateHouse Media.
Contact him at jgreco@gatehousemedia.com.
Missed front page of the day? Find the archive here.
