The daily lives of Brett, Julia & Data
Here are a few pages from today’s Sunday News-Times.
This page is a feature on a church in Bethel celebrating it’s 250th anniversary. In addition to the page itself, I put together the timeline at the bottom of the page (click on the image to see a zoom-able PDF).
This next page was a collaborative effort between myself and Mike DeSalvo for a story about what to tell your kids about the recession.
Here’s a page I put together for Sunday’s paper. The story is about a guy who witnessed a bunch of atomic bomb tests in 1958 as part of Operation Hardtack I on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Proving Grounds. I had originally planned a few more graphics, but space was at a premium, so I just put together three. Click on the image to see a PDF (you will be able to zoom in on elements with the PDF).
What I wanted to do (prototype, final version would have undoubtedly had some changes):
What I ended up doing:
Click on the images to see PDFs.
There are pros and cons to each, of course. The first has three bumping headlines (how big of a deal that is depends on who you ask, but this excellent Poynter Online piece debunks the severity of that issue), no dominant photo, and very little color. The second has a bad, blatantly staged photo of a guy with little mention in the story. The first has an instantly-recognizable, unique quality that tells the story far better and faster than the second. The second has a face and some color above the fold.
I don’t feel slighted or angry that the first didn’t run – it would have been a leap, and I can understand why it was turned down, but I do wish we didn’t feel obligated to play it safe every day.
What do you think?
In addition to our day-of coverage of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden last week, a recap of which you can read about here and on The News-Times website, we ran a big feature on the show in Sunday’s paper. Here are the pages, which were designed by Mike DeSalvo. Click on the images to see a high-resolution PDF.
All of our newsroom staff has been asked to pick a few entires to submit to the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists awards for 2008. These are the two I selected.
Well, Julia has finally made her Toronto post, so that’s good! Hopefully one of her New Year’s resolutions was to post more than once every four months in 2009.
I should mention that Data is currently on vacation. He is in Florida at a series of dog shows called the Florida Classic Cluster with handler Kathryn Mines. We dropped him off in New Jersey on Sunday, but the shows didn’t start until Thursday (took a few days for her to drive down), so we’ll be sure to post how he performs. The shows end on January 18th, and he will be back around the 20th. If he does well, we will try to continue showing him until he becomes a “champion,” then breed him. If he does poorly, we’ll chop off his balls.
Here are some pages, one is a low-resolution (hence shitty quality, but printed fine) version of a 2008 wrapup, the other is the January 9th front page.
