so...what's your bonds play look like?

i was doing 1A tonight...had a bonds tease saved that i did a couple of weeks ago. made the mast background orange (gradient-fade to black), big cutout of barry over one of the words in our name. kept it simple, "bonds blasts #755." we're historically pretty conservative design-wise, so this was a bit of a change.

 

We ripped up page 1 of the sports section. Took out the main local feature - which was mine - and supplanted it with Bonds tying the record. We had ARod up top, being a Texas paper, but moved Bonds up top and had ARod below him.
We had a headline along the lines of: Bonds ties Aaron ... is ARod next?
Not the exact thing, but along those lines.
Our 1A editor is a piece of shit, so there was no way Bonds was going out front.

 

How do you have to rip up the section? You can plan for this breaking news. Anyow, I am not privy to the front (or our case the back), but my question is what is more important, 755 or 756?

When he breaks it, it is bigger news than when he ties it. Right? Even if your a podunk daily, this is big news. And, I am of the ilk that national stories rarely go out front of smaller dailies if possible.

 

Happened seven minutes after deadline. Thank you, God.

 

Yeah, it's bigger news when he breaks it. But you can't be certain that's going to happen -- although one can be pretty damn sure. I think you've got to play it big because, as was reported last night, Bonds is only the second in baseball's 125-plus years to get to 755 home runs. It is a big, big story. No. 756 is bigger, but we're not there ... yet.

 

We have pre-made centerpieces for tying and breaking. We just have to update the info in the breakouts and the photo. We ripped up our front for the city edition, and replaced the top story (A-Rod) with Bonds for the state edition.

 

No chasing?

 

15K paper here. We had a 15-story package running in Sunday's paper, two stories out front, 13 stories spread through four other pages. There was no way I was ripping up my centerpiece. Bonds was stripped down one column from the top. It's where I had A-Rod until Bonds went yard. We had a teaser in the Bond story that referred inside to A-Rod.

 

We moved a local story inside and shifted a few things around on 1B. Photo, big headline, subhead and not very deep story.

 

15-story package?

 

1B across the top 60pt head. Dumped a local NFL story for it.

 

I stripped it down the right side of Page 1B in a 16-pica wide box. We had an area high school team playing for the state title yesterday (thank you, Iowa, for playing your prep baseball and softball in the summer time so we don't get any sort of break). Plus, with our deadline a half-hour earlier than weeknights, I couldn't afford to tear up 1B an hour before deadline.

Had he broken it, though, I was going to go with the original plan to meet deadline, then tear up 1B and two of the inside pages and substitute them as soon as possible. That way, presses roll on time, we stop to re-plate, and most of our readers get the updated version.

Monday will be fun. A 9 p.m. start, we never get a lot of space for Tuesdays these days, plus we have Iowa football media day to cover.