Anatomy of a front page: Photos, stories, shifting news values

What we at the Daily Herald and many other newspapers call the "centerpiece" has been a mainstay of our front-page design for at least four decades.

The concept is a derivative of another long-standing design concept that has been with newspapers practically since the introduction of the first black-and-white news photographs. At its root is the idea that visual images on a page (or on a wall, for that matter, or in any collection) should not compete with each other. That an assembly is more appealing when the viewer's eye is drawn to a single, prominent image and then allowed to scan at will over other elements of the page.

I'm not prepared to expound on the science or psychology of this design theory, and I suspect you're not interested in that kind of technical analysis. But it may help you understand us better to reflect on how we employ the centerpiece in our construction of the front page, and our editors' discussion of Wednesday's front page can be particularly instructive.

Because the centerpiece package of text and photos is so dominant, it is easy to assume that it is meant to serve as the most important or compelling element of the page - and therefore of that day's news. But this is not always the case. Indeed, design philosophy generally assumes that the story beneath a large headline in the upper right area of the page is the "newsiest" of the day, the one we think readers will find most serious and perhaps most impactful.

But when news and pictures are dramatic, the centerpiece becomes a natural spot for a story that is both photogenic and important. The result of these varying values from a design standpoint is an almost daily shifting of placements based on photos, story themes and news value in which we count on you to recognize, almost subconsciously, what we are trying to say with the design of that day's front page and how we are trying to attract you to the stories there.

As we began conceptualizing the Wednesday front page on Tuesday afternoon, we faced some special challenges. We had some interesting but not especially dramatic pictures of life-size dinosaur statues for a human interest feature about a project for Wheaton's downtown, and they were competing with more newsy pictures of President Biden on the picket line with striking UAW workers in Detroit. As for other elements competing for attention, there was talk, but nothing definitive yet, of possible action in the Senate on the federal budget deadlock and two additional compelling local stories - a controversy in South Barrington over the possible sale of land to a church and the details of a crowded hearing in Naperville about the environmental impact of the city's unusual arrangement as owner of its municipal electricity service.

Our initial impulse was to play the Biden-UAW story as the centerpiece because the photos were strong and the dinosaur exhibit seemed a little soft for such a dominant position. But editors began to have misgivings about what it might suggest to give such prominence to what was, however unusual a political action, at least as much a campaign appearance as a policy statement. With those thoughts in mind, we began to shift our thinking toward a centerpiece that was more human interest than hard news, but the discussion didn't end there.

No sooner had we settled on the dinosaur centerpiece and news presentation for the Biden story than the Senate did complete action pressuring the House on a budget deal and, bigger still, a New York judge ruled former President Donald Trump had built his real estate empire on systematic fraud.

Contrasting with the Biden story, one editor worried we faced the potential of a design that said "Trump bad, Biden good," prompting another to reply that the picket-line appearance didn't necessarily cast Biden in a "good" light.

Thus, we ended up with the page delivered to your doorsteps that showed the Trump story, clearly the biggest news of the day regardless of one's political assessment of it, in the main news position, the Biden story with a smaller picture lower on the page and the dinosaurs in the center.

Arranging the elements of the front page is always an interesting endeavor - and ultimately owes much to the designer's skill that makes the diverse elements work together. It is all done with considered intent to balance numerous subtle impressions in a presentation that is visually stimulating, even if the item at its center makes a different statement every day.

• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter lyat @JimSlusher. The ideas expressed in this column are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the newspaper's editorial board.