Topic: NewsBusters
As part of his ongoing coverage of how much space the Los Angeles Times devotes to Barack Obama, Dave Pierre notes in a Feb. 11 NewsBusters post that the paper devoted "1,215 words on page A17" to Obama's announcement that he was running for president. He adds: "In truth, there was actually more than this. There was also a 16-square-inch, full-color photo of Obama prominently displayed on the front page" (boldface and italics his).
With his typographical flourishes, Pierre makes that sound much more ominous than it actually is. Pretty much every newspaper in America runs color photos on the front page, so that's not exactly news. And a "16-square-inch" photo sounds big only if you don't know anything about newspapers. The typical broadsheet newspaper page is 12 by 21 inches, for a total of 252 square inches. Thus, the photo of Obama on the Times front page takes up well under 10 percent of the page (as the picture of the photo Pierre helpfully supplies amply illustrates).
The bigger problem from a design standpoint is that Obama is looking off the newspaper page, which is generally considered bad form in layout (though some argue otherwise).
Pierre also provides links to his previous posts on what he called "the LA Times-Obama love affair." Is someone a little too obsessed with this?
