The interesting thing about deadlines is ....
The deadlines for all three papers have been moved up within the last few months to help with consolidation of the presses. Good news for subscribers (that means you get your papers nice and early), but it puts us editors in a pinch, especially when it comes to campaign coverage. So here's the back story on the front page.
You'll notice that in Friday's paper, the main package on the Iowa Caucus has a big pic of Mike Huckabee and wife, surrounded by campaign supporters, and a mug of Barack Obama. Would have been nice to get equal-sized shots of both Huckabee and Obama (like we did on the Web sites), but with less than an hour to deadline, no victory shots of Obama had come across the wires. In fact, we were lucky that the Huckabee shots got in, since they arrived just minutes before we selected images. We were also concerned about having an Obama presence above the fold, and thus the mug was placed.
Comments
Concerned about an Obama presence above the fold???
Ya mean coz he's a Democrat? Or is it another reason?
Certainly in this day and age of the Internets one can get a photo off a streaming video from a campaign or large media website or even a cellphone. Think outside the box next time. Maybe have some photos from past stump speeches or rallies on file. The mugshot of Barack was pathetic and had it been Huckabee's photo instead you would have had subscription cancellations I'm sure.
Posted by: Libby | January 5, 2008 8:24 AM
We were concerned because we wanted Obama above the fold to sidestep any complaints about bias. As for where we can get photos, we are limited by copyrights and other issues. We can't just pull something we like from anywhere. We expected to get a better photo, but alas, time got us instead. We could have, as you said, pulled an earlier Iowa appearance, but, we didn't.
Posted by: Edward | January 6, 2008 4:45 PM
Yeah, Libby, we definitely could have pulled a file photo, but we thought it was important to try to get reaction shots of the candidates post-victory. That's what we were hoping for, at least.
We went for the same kind of effect in Wednesday's (Jan. 9) paper with results of the New Hampshire primaries. Except in this one, we got the reaction shot of Hillary above the fold. The victory shot of McCain, however, wasn't mugged, but went below the fold.
Posted by: Kate | January 9, 2008 9:50 PM