S.F. Chronicle has two front pages Saturday for Bonds story

They couldn't decide which A1 design to go with between two choices, so they went with both. They alternated, so one person might get one front and their neighbor might get another.



This is the explanation on Romenesko:

 

For those who collect newspapers of significant events, in sports or otherwise, they'll want to have both of those front pages, thus (potentially) doubling sales that day. I used to collect Elvis stuff, but when TV Guide printed four different covers of the guy on the same week's issue, I didn't buy any of them. Sounds like a marketing ploy to me.

 

Lemme ask something...this is from someone who's never worked in a paper, only TV and radio:
Is that standard to have 2 people working on 2 completely different ideas?

 

Maybe not standard, but if you know something is coming, different designers may have been tinkering with different ideas.

Neither one of them is all that hot as far as I am concerned.

 

I did like the one on the right.

 

Hulk smash!!!

 

I actually like this idea, and I wonder why it isn't done more often.

Innovative thinking, for once.

 

For one thing, you'd have to have to right press setup to do it. For another, how does it benefit/interest the reader who gets one paper and probably doesn't know that there is another sports front out there somewhere.

 

You're in the store, and you see both covers. And you probably pick up both.

I'm sure it boosted single-copy sales.

 

Possibly. If circulation did it so every other paper was different rather than you get big batches of one kind here and big batches of the other cover there.

 

Very cool idea. Entertainment Weekly does this often ... fun and innovative.

 

are both on ebay yet?