By Kelly Kazek
The News Courier

ATHENS, Ala.

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, a group of News Courier reporters, the publisher and some department managers sat around a conference table eating pizza, which is not unusual, and looking over potential front pages for Wednesday, which is unusual.

The News Courier's front page Nov. 5.	The design prepared, but not used, in case of a McCain victory.

Large newspapers such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe may have the time and staff to prepare versions of a front page and hold discussions about them daily but we are a small community newspaper. Because of this each of the eight members of our news staff have duties that go beyond writing.

On election day, not only did we have a historic event occurring with the largest voter turnout expected locally and nationwide, we still needed to complete daily duties: lay out inside pages; type in community notices, engagements and weddings; get local sports scores and the arrest report; take photos; design and layout sports and lifestyles for Wednesday’s edition; plus post stories, photos and breaking news to our Web site.

We would attempt to do a lot on Tuesday with fewer than half the staff of larger competitors.

To design eight potential front pages for the collectible election edition that would be seen across our county on Wednesday morning was a historic moment for us, as well.

We knew that we needed to put some thought into the headline, the photo, the design, even the fonts, as we never have before. We knew we needed, despite predictions, to be prepared for a win by Obama or McCain, and also to be prepared if no winner had been declared by our press time, which was later than is typical at 11:30 p.m. but still much earlier than other newspapers.

With such a huge turnout and with problems seen in past presidential elections, we knew it was possible the race may not be called by press time.

The layout of newspaper pages has been computerized for many years now, which allowed us to create smaller versions of front pages and print them for discussion.

So some of the writers and I thought about headlines.

Reporter Jean Cole gave her thoughts: “As a Yellow Dog Democrat, I didn’t believe McCain had a snowball’s chance of winning, so it was a challenge to pretend he might. However, confidence can blind, so you try to be objective. Remember the ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ headline? I thought our paper should boldly convey that the nation had elected its first black president.”

Many newspapers would use a play on words, perhaps using a candidate’s name, perhaps his campaign catch phrases. Some would stay with a simple format: “Obama wins.”

We knew our front page could be good enough to compete with those of papers two, three, five times our size so I designed eight versions of front pages (if you don’t include a few joke front pages we couldn’t resist making. Hey, it was going to be a long day and we needed levity.)

As we lunched, we discussed the pages laid across the tops of pizza boxes and tried to think like our readers.

Some of the ideas included simple headlines such as “History made” in a bold but smaller font and “OBAMA WINS” in a larger font.

With Obama, options with plays on his name abounded but none seemed quite right. People were using “Barack” as “rock,” as in “Barack the vote;” people were using “Obama” negatively, such as “Obomba” or “Obama-nation.”

Because our headline needed to be positive, I turned to his campaign’s catch phrases such a “Yes, We Can” and “Change You Can Believe In” for ideas.

If McCain won, I wanted to put “Just call him BIG MAC” for a fun play on his new position as the “leader of the free world.” Some of the staff questioned use of the phrase trademarked by McDonald’s but because it was a nickname McCain himself had used, we felt safe in using it.

We also had a simpler version about McCain winning in an upset.

One version said “HAIL TO …?” above photos of both men facing each other. This would be the version we would be forced to use if we did not know who our next president was by 11:30. We were anxious about this option, knowing that, as all of us slept, the election could be determined and our headline would be dated and, frankly, useless.

We then turned our attention to photos. I used some of the hundreds of photos that had come across the Associated Press wire for our prototypes. We planned to update them later when photos from election day were posted but we knew we may not get the “victory shot” because it could be late before concessions and victory.

As it turned out, Obama’s victory speech ended 15 minutes before our deadline and it takes time for AP to post photos and a story. Also, it takes much more than 15 minutes to layout, proof and send pages — via computer — to the press in Cullman where our paper is printed.

In addition, a large number of the more recent photos, including some from election day morning, had black backgrounds. We wanted a photo with color, preferably with a flag in the background to give it that look of patriotism and history.

We had a beautiful photo of John McCain standing under a blue sky and a waving flag.

The photo of Obama in front of a flag was good of him, but the color on the flag was not as vibrant as the one in McCain’s.

Late in the evening, it became apparent that none of the earlier election day photos showing Obama in casual dress would be right and we would not have time to get the victory photo. We would need to stay with the flag photo chosen earlier.

When we discovered the next morning that most newspapers chose a photo of the entire Obama family wearing dark clothes against a dark backdrop during the historic speech, we were glad of our forced decision.

We felt this front page needed to have a photo of the man, and the man only. We felt it was more dramatic.

To give the photo optimum space, Cole suggested removing the rail from the left side of the page, which is the space we typically use to tell readers about content inside that day’s newspaper. This difference in design also conveyed that this was not a typical edition. We already had decided to forgo the sports teaser that is typically at the top of the paper with a cutout action photo and move “The News Courier” banner to the top. This way, readers would see more of our paper from rack windows.

While we heard some McCain supporters question the huge headline and photo, it was important to illustrate the magnitude of the history of the event.

We think readers enjoyed this collector’s edition — and a once-in-a-lifetime front page.

Kelly Kazek is managing editor of The News Courier in Athens, Ala.