Every reader has an opinion on what ought to go on the front page of the newspaper. But no two of these reader opinions are alike, which complicates the task of creating a Page One that will have universal appeal.
Designing Page One involves more than just picking out the four or five Most Important News Events. A front page each day with stories about the war in Iraq, global warming, and whatever decisions Congress and the president made would be a crushing bore.
Particularly in this age of ubiquitous media, the ideal newspaper front page does more than inform. It also enlightens and entertains, investigates and intrigues. Today’s Page One must be different from yesterday’s Page One. Of course we can’t ignore the big world and national news that gushes from the electronic media all day, but it’s important that we also tell you things you cannot find anywhere else.
Often these unexpected gems come in the form of feature stories that don’t fit the classic definition of “news.” But that doesn’t mean they should be relegated by rote to the inside sections. They make Page One when they tell you something unique to this newspaper, and are interesting enough to kick a more important – but perhaps less interesting – story inside.
“Interesting” is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and last weekend’s front page lineup drew more than the usual number of questions and criticisms from our readers on a wide range of topics. Here are some of them, with answers from the editors who made the decisions:
Why did The Plain Dealer put the House and Senate votes on the Iraq resolutions on Page A6 Saturday and Page A17 Sunday? This was huge national news.
Assistant Managing Editor Daryl Kannberg, who oversees Page One decisions: “By the time the votes actually happened, we had printed a litany of stories establishing the symbolism and meaning of the votes and how the measures would fare in each house. The votes themselves were anti-climactic and there really wasn’t much left to say about them.
“The night before the House vote, we had a front-page story from our Washington bureau that put our Northeast Ohio lawmakers on the record on this issue. That was a smarter, more compelling story to tell our local readers – and one they weren’t going to get anywhere else. That one belonged on the front page.”
On a Sunday morning, I don’t want to read about better sex through surgery. Why did you put the story about vaginal reconstruction on Page One?
Assistant Managing Editor/Sunday Christine Jindra: “The story had elements that I look for in choosing a Page One story – high reader interest and a chance to educate. Despite ads on the Internet and cable television shows, I thought that most readers knew little about these nip and tuck surgeries, and that women, especially, would be interested in how some doctors appealed to female insecurities to promote the procedures.
“Reporter Diana Keough put the story into perspective by including critical views of doctors from the Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth Medical Center.”
What was the steroid story doing on Page One Sunday? It belonged back in sports.
Jindra: “Steroid and other drug use in sports is so widespread that ‘Does everybody cheat?’ seemed to be a natural for Page One. Reporter Mary Schmitt Boyer and her editor, associate sports editor David Campbell, creatively added to the topic: getting Plain Dealer Players of the Week to talk about what teens think, doing a sport-by-sport summary of problems, and listing drug-related suspensions in the major leagues. The two-page presentation appealed to a broad readership as well as sports fans who seem to obsess over details.”
On Sunday, a plane skidded off the runway at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. Your big front page story Monday was about an expensive spa for dogs. The plane story and photo were in the Metro section. Why weren’t these swapped?
Deputy News Editor Chuck Caton: “The plane incident happened early in the afternoon, so it wasn’t exactly breaking news. Nobody was hurt, and we didn’t have any more information for people than what they could already have seen in other media.
“I thought people would enjoy the pet story immensely. Not that they couldn’t have enjoyed it on the Metro cover, but readers wouldn’t see that story anywhere else, and the plane thing had been out there all day, so I put the plane in Metro.”
Why don’t you put stories about food being recalled on Page One so that more people can see them? Monday you had a story about recalled chicken strips back on Page A10.
Kannberg: “Health warnings and food recalls are tricky. You want to warn people, but you don’t want to scare the heck out of them unnecessarily. We run most inside the A section, reserving front-page play for ones that are clearly dangerous and have appeared in our area. So far, thankfully, those two things have not occurred in this latest scare.”
I don’t agree with everything our Page One editors do, any more than you do. But I understand and respect the logic behind each one of the above decisions. The only one with which I would strongly differ is the airport/dog spa choice.
True enough, there were only slight injuries on the airplane and the dog spa story was interesting. But the desire to give readers something different should not become blinding, and a commercial airliner sliding off a runway is not something that happens every day. It is a dramatic, national story that readers expect will be on Page One of their local newspaper.
