Best-looking newspapers?

If you can, get your hands on a copy of the Irish Times out of Dublin (the original, not Ohio). I know it's not of this country, but it makes for great reading.

Large web width and big, color photos throughout the paper made folks at my last stop green with envy. The design is clean, if not spectacular, but the overall presentation is well worth the effort.

 

The Bakersfield design is a ripoff of Montréal's La Presse, which is one of the most beautifully designed newspapers in the world. La Presse really makes that design work. Bakersfield butchers it. And it's no fault of the designers at Bakersfield -- the foundation of it, the typography, all of it just doesn't work.

Look north for some fantastic visual inspiration: La Presse, National Post, Le Devoir.

 

Bakersfield will always be the bottom of the design barrel. It is absolute shit.

As for the best, I'm partial to The Oregonian. Clean, easy-to-read, excellent use of typography and color and modern without ignoring classic sensibilities. Palm Beach Post is also up there. Having been to Buffalo, I still find it hard to believe such a lousy city had such an elegant-looking newspaper.

I like the Pilot's originality, but not much else.

 

I actually wouldn't mind Bakersfield nearly as much without all the color screens. Same with the KC Star.

 

The Dispatch consistently looks clean and sharp. Too bad their sports section isn't a shell of what it was even two years ago, though they did recently lose the joke of a beat writer they had covering Cleveland teams.

 

Design needs to be part of a strategy; it needs to deliver a message to the readers about its content and values. A clean, elegant, professional look on a small paper like New London says we're credible, we're confident enough in our content that we don't have to scream at you and we respect you enough to not dumb it down for you.

 

I've always loved the Cleveland Plain Dealer's look. Very clean, and great use of photos.

Except for that time they showed that guy falling to his death and ran a front page apology.

Plus, they did the best HS football preview I;ve seen with a TV Guide-themed tab.

 

Buffalo is indeed underrated. Frank makes a good point on New London and Hartford. Hartford has won SND's award for top 5 designed papers in the WORLD twice since 2000.

http://www.newsdesigner.com/archives/002113.php


Also, really like Salt Lake. Never good until recently. Among the worst? Bakersfield, Detroit... anybody that cuts type into photos, uses photoshop wrong screens every other story. So 1988-ish.

 

Hey, to each his own. I'm a big fan of the new, contemporary look.

Today's PI of the Star looks fantastic.

 

Here's a link to KC
http://www.kansascity.com/front_page/
You can download a week's worth of PDF covers if you want.
I like the cover as well.

I like The State. I think it is really well done. Hartford, the Oregonian, they are really clean, simple, but not, if that makes sense.
Then the Spanish and Swedish papers. They do things I'd like to pull off, but can't.

 

www.newseum.org is great for looking at front pages ...

does anybody know of a similar site that focuses on sports pages?

 

I can buy that, Frank. The Day's features fronts always seem solid to way above average when I look at them. Their Page 1s I like for this reason -- if there is a big national story, they play it up high. It isn't all local, local, local. But their Page 1s also look like they get recycled once a week.

Yeah, um, it is great throughout. All but that little part called the columns and stories.
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Really? When I read Harrisburg, I find strong writing, with writers not afraid to ask tough questions -- especially in sports, where almost every one of their readers thinks David Jones should be 100 percent homer. The amount of ground they cover for preps is pretty large, and they have a handle on it.