Rethink.

Post details: • Did a newspaper forget to include its masthead Wednesday? • How important are mastheads? • Have a good Fourth of July! Yesterday’s (7/2) front page of The Bakersfield Californian was missing a very important element above the fold. Or, one can ask, was it even the Californian? Yes, that’s right – it looks like the page designer Monday night forgot to include the paper’s Old English styled masthead. Maybe the designer could not decide on a color to match the “Hancock” photo, so that person chose invisible. Normally I disregard odd front pages I find on Newseum and attribute it to an error in uploading or some other type of malfunction. (Some days, a Newseum front page browser can find a full page ad or the sports page instead of that paper’s A1.) After receiving an e-mail from a friend and colleague interning there this summer, I figure the masthead really was missing. (By the way, I would like to congratulate my friend for TWO – count them, one, and two – bylines on t...

Post details: • A look at the similarities of newspaper design Looking through front pages on Newseum yesterday (6/3), I found myself with a case of déjà vu? Or was it? Starting alphabetically, I thought the Bakersfield Californian chose a great Associated Press photo of Hillary Rodham Clinton taken Monday by Elise Amendola in Sioux Falls, S.D., when Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y., was coming from her campaign plane. The paper’s designer utilized great treatment of the photo putting text on top (“Will she stay or go?”). Continuing my perusal of Newseum, I found the San Jose Mercury News went with an almost identical photo (the second in the series by Amendola) with similar treatment. This time the text was “Is this the end?” This was not the first time similar photos and treatments have been used on the same day’s front pages. Thus, I moved on. Then I came across the Cleveland Plain Dealer , which used the same photo as the Mercury News, along with very similar text (“Is it over?”). My reactio...