Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes … There are days when you begin designing A1 and you just know you’re bound to need to redesign your page later in the evening.

Usually this is because a big story is out there, but the big news has not yet broken. The important photos have not yet moved. The story could end up in limbo at presstime or it could fade back into a less important story or it could tremendously grow in importance.

The trapped coal miners in West Virginia on Jan. 3rd is one example.

5 p.m.

It’s 5 p.m. East Coast time and the empty page lies in front of you. How do you design a page flexible enough to accommodate all three scenarios? While there are lots of ways to approach this, here are some tips for designing Page A1 under this kind of pressure:

1. Decide if you need to design two different versions of the front page. There are several reasons why you might want to do this, but often it is not necessary. If you have really good art to use with a story that might need to get replaced or moved later, having the general direction of both designs nailed down early is a good idea. If there are two entirely different directions you want to go, this is a good idea.
2. If not, lock down part of the page and keep the rest in flux. This involves knowing which stories will remain on the page regardless of how the anticipated breaking news evolves. Design these portions of the page first. I sometimes think of these stories as the cement, as opposed to the pool. Set your cement early and play in the pool later.
3. Create a large modular portion of the page that can accommodate a large breaking story if needed. This area will also accommodate the stories that could possibly need to be removed from the page.
4. Carefully consider your headline treatments. For the portion of the page that will be locked in place, such as the right-hand rail or the bottom of the page, it helps to have headline sizes and fonts that won’t need to be altered later. For the lead story on the right, this means running a headline large enough to function as the lead headline for the page, but not so large that it couldn’t serve as secondary in importance. The newspaper I work at tends to use larger headlines, so for us this middle range for a lead headline would be in the 64-72 pt. range. For the bottom of the page, this is not so hard. Smaller headlines will probably work in any scenario, such as headlines in the 30-40 pt. range.
5. When it becomes necessary to configure the large hole later (”the pool”), and the news still has not become decisively clear, continue to carefully weight your headlines for flexibility late at night.

Let’s return to the coal miner story as an example and see how these design tips worked. What follows is a typical progression to the evening (up until midnight), and one that happened for us with the coal miners story:

The coal miner story was especially difficult because no really good images were on the wire. But that didn’t mean we wouldn’t get any. There was art from the day previously that wasn’t bad, but on a breaking news story, we wouldn’t use these. Even if the story did not fundamentally change, just the passage of time lent an increasingly grim air to the news. So it was wise to plan for the possibility of leading with the coal miners or making it a centerpiece from the outset.

In our case, our backup plan was a centerpiece local package with photos on the problems local seniors were having using the new Medicare Plan D prescription coverage. If this art had been compelling enough, we could have planned for a centerpiece package on the Medicare story and left a strip across the top for the miners story or placed the miners in the lead right-hand story position.

For us, the Medicare art was good enough to use as lead art on the page, but it wasn’t our first preference. We were hoping to get better art on the coal miners and play that story up.

On this night I decided to clear out a large block of room in a prominent location to later place both the potentially late-breaking coal miner story and the Medicare story. This would have worked whether the Medicare story was dropped from the page altogether, placed at the top of the page or placed lower on the page beneath the coal miners. We ran the story of Jack Abramoff’s guilty plea in the right-hand hard-news position.

Clearing a hole to fill later with the breaking story allowed me to focus in the early hours on the rest of the page. The rest of the stories on the front were designed and edited, and inside jump pages designed so that if the news broke late, there were just two stories still in flux. It also allowed time for better photos to move and for the story to develop.

An alternate approach would have been designing several different versions of the cover. If I had really good art to work with, but could have approached it two different ways, I probably would have done this. I often at least do this in thumbnail form and often run it by my editors. Better yet, if you have time, show them the entire page designed two different ways with dummy text. I chose not to take this path primarily because I really didn’t feel we would lead with the Medicare package.

7 p.m.

It was 7 p.m. I had run my initial layout and design options past the appropriate editors and gotten concensus on what choices were still available as the night progressed. There were still no good photos available.

I worked on finishing the design of the other Page One stories so these can be sent to the copy desk for editing and headlines.

9 p.m.

As 9 p.m. neared, the design had been finished on the rest of the A1 stories and the stories were being copy edited and headlines written.

And now I reached the point when I was just waiting for something to happen. At this point, the A1 designer really starts to feel the pressure to design something in that big blank space. Do you give in without having the photos you are hoping for? Do you wait? I find that in practice, I always give in. This is the time to get creative with the photos that are available and try different approaches. It’s time to design for the story that you do have. I can’t just sit there waiting as no good photos move across the wire and no news breaks.

In this case, I started with the story that was not breaking, the Medicare story. I had the art. I had the story. It was time to decide where to put it and get started on it. I placed the Medicare story at the top of the page, given that there were no significant developments yet in the coal miner story, and with the knowledge that I could quickly drop it down below the coal miners package if something important were to happen. The Medicare story was the one that focused on local problems, so placing it at the top was absolutely acceptable. I used our lighter headline font to provide contrast with the Abramoff hard-news headline on the right and didn’t use too large of a headline, in case this story was moved lower on the page later.

It was about this time that news came that the body of one miner had been found. I was confident at this point that the lead art position would be devoted to the coal miners story. I just wished better art was available.

It’s a bit unnerving when the lead story’s design gets put off until last. We had used a photo on the front page the day before of grieving family members. We were looking for another approach. I decided to use the art that was discussed in our Page One meeting for being a candidate for use on the front. It was an overall shot of the mine itself. I also sent an iconic image of an unidentified miner in mourning over to our photo imager as well. I placed the mine photo at the top of the package, with the miner silhouetted on a black background below the photo along with reversed out story headlines and text. It wasn’t phenomenal … but it was the best I could do with the photos available.

With this treatment the headline remained below the fold, which was a problem. I should have at this point just moved the Medicare story down beneath the miners package, but the thought eluded me, even though I had originally considered it an option I might want to take if the coal miners story grew in importance.

10 p.m.

I sent the story we did have of one body being found to the copy desk. I chose my jump page art of the governor of West Virginia consoling a relative on a trapped miner. We used a graphic on the jump page of the trends in recent years in coal miner accidents and deaths.

Deadline

That was all that happened in the breaking news department as deadline came around. No good images moved. At 11:45 the newspaper was finished. Our headline, “Mine tragedy,” (not in quotes) was below the fold. We had a fairly large hard-news headline on the Abramoff story in the lead, right-hand position. At 11:50 I left.

The presses were preparing to start. One news editor, one sports editor and one designer remained in the newsroom, to check the paper and get the late Orange Bowl game story into the paper as a replate that would reach most subscribers.

While driving home not more than ten minutes later I heard on the radio that 12 miners were found alive. I called the newsroom. I was asked to return to help do the replate. This normally does not happen, but since I knew we might change the art, move the stories around on the page and be dealing with a lot while the other designer was needed in sports, I returned. I also knew I had reversed-out type at a larger size than normal, with more leading than normal, and a jump line that had flowed into an extra box linked off the body copy box (this was a workaround to the problem that our automatically placed jump lines do not like to be positioned where text wrap interferes with them). The other designer would not necessarily have the time to get all of the particulars down.

Stop the presses

Back at my desk, we moved the miner story to the top and moved the Medicare story down. We didn’t touch the type in the Medicare story or change the jump. It took 10 seconds to do. Thankfully, the lead headline and subhead were above the fold. I checked the photo wire … nothing.

The news editor called the pressroom and shut things down. We didn’t want too many papers getting out with the headline “Mine tragedy” when the families were celebrating a seemingly miraculous occurrence.

It was 12:25 and we were waiting for a long-enough write-through of the story to move on the wire. All that was available was a short write-through that we could try to cobble with the earlier story if needed into a story that was long enough to fill our jump space. I checked the photo wire: No celebration photos had moved.

Sometime in the next few minutes a long-enough story moved and we worked to get it on the page.

12:30 p.m. … no photos yet. We were just about done.

Our lead headline was now “They’re Alive!” in quotes. Our deck headline attributed the announcement to a mine foreman.

We checked the photo wire one more time … and the picture of two woman clasping hands in tears and jubilation or relief had moved. We put it on the page as well, replacing the overall shot of the mine. It was 12:45 p.m. and we sent the page. About the same time, the sports department sent their page with the story on the Orange Bowl, which had gone into triple overtime.

The final version of the section front ran in most newspapers of the Cape Cod Times. An earlier version with the headline of “Mine tragedy” was delivered to a much smaller number of subscribers.

At 12:50 I left. I went home satisfied. It’s not often you get to stop the presses for a big story and come through with a page that didn’t look too thrown together. At home, our cable was out. I went to sleep.

The aftermath

Imagine my surprise when I awoke to discover that 12 miners had not in fact been found alive. Only one was struggling to survive.

… Horror …

I carefully read our story in the newspaper. I did not have time the night before to read it. Not a single sentence was incorrect. AP had done a very good job attributing everything to credible participants, although perhaps the murkiness of the situation was not quite clear enough. The story, the photo captions, the headlines were all true, at least in the sense that a foreman had announced that 12 miners were alive and the families were celebrating. The governor had said they were alive. Everything was attributed. Even our lead headline was in quotes, reflecting the announcement and celebration, but not a statement of fact … we could report that it was said, and that was big news.

But do readers appreciate this? Absolutely not. Did we get phone calls from irate readers? Absolutely.

Did we have the story wrong? Well … yes … I suppose we did. Do I stand behind my involvement? Yes, I do … in regret.

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