There were as many hits as misses today. The Mississippi Press had the funniest photo. AM New York had the funniest headline.

Mardi Gras pages from The Times Picayune, The Daily Advertiser and the Sun Herald didn't live up to their headlines. Better photos and tighter crops would have helped.

There were two takes on drug robberies from the OC Post and the Opelika-Auburn News.

The News Sentinel missed the point in their attempt to copy the brilliance of a city council solution from The Virginian-Pilot. The Pilot's solution made a point about unanimous votes. The News Sentinel's solution does not – it's merely a mish-mash of yeas and nays. It's OK to steal an idea if it serves your readers, but copies should honor originals by doing justice to them.

Today's BFD is the Reading Eagle for their above-the-fold presentation.

If you want to promote single-copy sales, you need to pick stories that are relevant, write headlines that are clear and use images that have impact. The Eagle did all three things today, while avoiding the temptation to do too much.

A promo about the weather's impact on readers and a folo on a major traffic tie-up are bound to gain the attention of local readers, particularly when then headlines speak directly to readers' concerns, as these do. ("Feeling cold?" and "What went wrong?") All the images – large and small – were cropped for legibility and impact.

Then the Eagle went further with this wonderful headline: "Out of the blue, a menacing white." But they didn't go too far by putting too many things above the fold. Three is often the best number for above-the-fold elements.

Update: We agree with Nicole's comment (below) about the Detroit Free Press – its above-the-fold presentation looks better than the Reading Eagle's. But the biggest headline on the Freep's cover "Fat, then fast," doesn't communicate the nature of the story, so this presentation misses an opportunity to connect with potential purchasers.

To drive single-copy sales, headlines must communicate in an instant, and they can't depend on much smaller heads for context, as does the biggest headline from the Freep. In our research, we've found a headline's content is more important than its appearance. In this important respect, the Eagle was more successful.


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