What is it about big sports news that often brings out the best in newspaper design? Is it the passion of the fans? Or the adrenaline release of a big win? The thrill of victory? The agony of defeat?
Whatever it is, I know a lot of you are pumping out page after page of NCAA basketball coverage. Let's take a look at Michigan State's The State News' coverage of their women's team advancing to the Final Four.
What I like about covering sports is that every game is a story unto itself. Every game has a beginning, middle and end, and has any number of angles to cover. The State News seems to have that figured out here, using multiple storytelling devices to report the news and advance the story. The dramatic umbrella headline unites the various elements without resorting to overly fussy design gimmicks.
I also like the two-story treatment on the men's tournament. The stories are great ways to cover different aspects of MSU's place in the men's Final Four. The Flashback is a particularly nice touch.
There are some finer details I could quibble with here (alignment for one; the screened sidebar, main photo and deck headline should all be aligned at the top), but they're largely issues of tidiness. These Spartans are, for the most part, showing a sophisticated level of journalism executed well by their visual team.
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Alex Brown edits pages in the A section of the Los Angeles Times. He deserves credit for not obsessing over that gigantic bullet at the top of the page.
