November 5th's Best Frontpages

Online journalism may be the future, but apparently there is still a market for newspapers... as mementos. Thanks to the Internet, at least I can now browse through the frontpages of the nation's papers at will. The Sun-Times cover above is my favorite, probably not coincidentally because it is also my hometown paper of choice. Oprah liked it too. Here are my selections for the best/most interesting designs on such a momentous day:

Orlando Sentinel	Hartford Courant
Record Searchlight	The Bakersfield Californian
The Star Press	The Winchester Sun
The Times-Picayune	The Kansas City-Star
AM New York	Staten Island Advance
The Charlotte Observer	Statesman Journal
The Patriot-News	O Globo
Le Journal de Montréal	Winnipeg Sun
Winnipeg Free Press	El Periódico de Catalunya

Of interest:

1. Though I couldn't avoid selecting a few that did so, I hated any paper that ran "historic" or "history" in their headline. It's an empty statement; every presidential election has been historic and every one will be historic. Was this one particularly significant? Yeah, but I think you could have done better than the trite "historic."


2. The Times-Picayune and Staten Island Advance handled the "historic" aspect of the election very well, by illustrating exactly how Obama is different than our other 43 presidents. Kudos.


3. The only reason I selected the Statesman Journal is because of its headline - "epic win" is a catchphrase of sorts among people who spend entirely too much time on the Internet, and I can't help but think that some sly copy editor thought he was being especially clever when he suggested that one.


4. O Globo's political cartoon is particularly odd, especially seeing as how it includes Arnold Schwarzenegger.


5. The Winnipeg Sun: Apparently fans of cartoons.


6. The Winnipeg Free Press seems to give itself quite a bit of credit for Obama's win - and is their capitalization of "American Idol" some sort of dig at U.S. culture or what?


7. I suspect the El Periódico frontpage may actually be from the day preceding the results (nope, can't read Spanish), but it's interesting nonetheless.