May 14, 2008
The Sichuan earthquake made the front page of virtually every newspaper in China today, leaving editors with the difficult task of coming up with visually distinctive yet tasteful layouts using the same Xinhua photos that all other newspapers had access to.
Some highlights:
– The Chinese Business View went with an all-black front page.
– Life Daily ran a full-page photo of a victim waiting to be extracted from the rubble, with the headline “Resolute China.”
– And pictured here is the front-page of today’s Shenyang Evening News, which features Premier Wen Jiabao visiting an injured child in Mianyang, Sichuan. The headline takes the slogan shouted during sports events and the Olympic torch relay, “Go China!” (加油中国) and turns it into a rallying cry for the rescue effort.
Compare this design to the that of today’s People’s Daily, which took a similar photo of Wen Jiabao visiting some children and inserted it into a layout that’s particularly uninspired, even for that newspaper. Even the Overseas Edition, which used the same photo as Shenyang Evening News, is much, much better.