Despite the seemingly inevitable demise of printed newspapers as we know it, there’s still something very powerful about the printed front page. As public communicators, we look at that as the best landing spot for good news and the worst possible place for dirty laundry to be aired. Keeping that in mind, there’s a really cool website where you can view 793 of today’s front pages of newspapers published in 77 different countries. These aren’t some bitmap rendering, they are presented in their original, unedited form – and in high resolution so you can print them if you wish.
You can view pages in three different mods: Gallery, List and Map. In all cases front pages can be sorted by region (USA, North America, Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Middle East, Oceania, South America, Africa), zoomed in, printed out and saved as readable PDF.
I recently visited the Newseum in Washington DC (that’s my photo on the right – go ahead and click on it to see a bigger picture) and they print out many of the daily front pages from across the world and display them in front of their building and in a special exhibit on the 6th Floor. Every morning, as many as 800 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet to be part of Today’s Front Pages. There’s an entire art and science surrounding the layout of text, photos and illustrations in newspapers. It’s really quite inspiring and sobering. Sometimes you forget the enormous power and importance of the press.
Top 5 Reasons Why Today’s Front Pages are Useful to Professional Communicators
- You can see, in real time, what’s being published in areas you would otherwise have no way of seeing the printed publication
- It provides you micro-perspective on what is making headlines and what isn’t in different cities
- The pages are downloadable in PDF so you can send “clips” to your executive and staff
- You can save front pages from memorable events and print them in high-resolution for display
- They’re just plain cool to look at – you might consider printing some and posting them in your work area to inspire the journalist in all of us
Notorious Events Captured in Accessible Archives
- Michael Jackson Memorial Service
- Obama Presidential Inauguration 2009
- 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
- War in Iraq
- California wildfires
- Virginia Tech Massacre
- Red Sox win the World Series
- Terrorist bombings in Madrid
- Columbia Shuttle Explosion
- …and more, including the Top 10 Pages
To view Today’s Front Pages and see the archives, click here or visit http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages
A Special Look Inside the Newseum Coming Soon
There’s so much more to the Newseum than just the Today’s Front Pages exhibit. I’ll be posting my own tour and photos from my experience at the Newseum in Washington DC soon, so keep an eye out!
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