Demand surges for history-making papers
Our country made history this week by electing our first African-American president. Just as is the case for other momentous events in the history of our planet, newspapers documenting Barack Obama’s election have been in high demand.
Customers bought between 2,000 and 3,000 additional copies of the Wednesday, Nov. 5 edition of The Enterprise from racks in Southeast Texas and the demand for Thursday’s paper also was higher than normal.
Other newspapers, such as the Houston Chronicle, actually ran additional copies of their publication to meet public demand.
As a long-time journalist, I’ve seen copies, framed and unframed of front pages reflecting frozen moments of history: the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the end of WWII; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the break-up of the shuttle Columbia in 2003. This time it’s nice to know we’ve made history with some good news, worth celebrating and worth saving to share with our children and grandchildren.
In more President-elect Obama news, two readers called to complain about that historic Wednesday front page. One objected to a headline that said, “Obama becomes first African-American president,” saying the word president should have been capitalized. She hinted that the lowercase president showed a lack of respect. Actually what the lowercase president shows is AP (Associated Press) style. The Enterprise uses what is called “down-style” headlines, which means only the first word and words ordinarily capitalized, start with capital letters. All others start with lowercase letters. President is capitalized only at the beginning of the headline (or sentence) or when preceding a name, as in a title. President-elect Obama is correct as is Obama, president-elect.
A second reader called to complain that the front page contained equal-size photographs of Obama and McCain alongside their vote totals at the top of the page. Even though there was a larger photo of the entire Obama family below that, it didn’t matter. According to that reader the whole front page should have been a photograph of Obama. We could easily concede that the front page photo of the family could have been cropped a bit tighter and enlarged a bit, but the page design and photo selection was the product of tight deadlines, not a purposeful slight as the caller implied.
When I saw the front page, personally, it made me smile to see such a lovely family celebrating such a wonderful victory. And it struck me that they were wearing red, symbolically the Republican color, which I would like to think represents the need for setting aside formerly observed artificially drawn lines and moving forward in unity – one country, one leader, and one historic moment.
Customers bought between 2,000 and 3,000 additional copies of the Wednesday, Nov. 5 edition of The Enterprise from racks in Southeast Texas and the demand for Thursday’s paper also was higher than normal.
Other newspapers, such as the Houston Chronicle, actually ran additional copies of their publication to meet public demand.
As a long-time journalist, I’ve seen copies, framed and unframed of front pages reflecting frozen moments of history: the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the end of WWII; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the break-up of the shuttle Columbia in 2003. This time it’s nice to know we’ve made history with some good news, worth celebrating and worth saving to share with our children and grandchildren.
In more President-elect Obama news, two readers called to complain about that historic Wednesday front page. One objected to a headline that said, “Obama becomes first African-American president,” saying the word president should have been capitalized. She hinted that the lowercase president showed a lack of respect. Actually what the lowercase president shows is AP (Associated Press) style. The Enterprise uses what is called “down-style” headlines, which means only the first word and words ordinarily capitalized, start with capital letters. All others start with lowercase letters. President is capitalized only at the beginning of the headline (or sentence) or when preceding a name, as in a title. President-elect Obama is correct as is Obama, president-elect.
A second reader called to complain that the front page contained equal-size photographs of Obama and McCain alongside their vote totals at the top of the page. Even though there was a larger photo of the entire Obama family below that, it didn’t matter. According to that reader the whole front page should have been a photograph of Obama. We could easily concede that the front page photo of the family could have been cropped a bit tighter and enlarged a bit, but the page design and photo selection was the product of tight deadlines, not a purposeful slight as the caller implied.
When I saw the front page, personally, it made me smile to see such a lovely family celebrating such a wonderful victory. And it struck me that they were wearing red, symbolically the Republican color, which I would like to think represents the need for setting aside formerly observed artificially drawn lines and moving forward in unity – one country, one leader, and one historic moment.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 3:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home