GOP vs Clinton and JJ vs. Oregonian, 1994

As 1A editor at The Jersey Journal, I had two significant advantages: incredible leeway to shape the news package and the KRT wire. I set about pulling together weighty fronts that emphasized the biggest and best of the day, often recasting mainbars with pieces of The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, MIami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Sun-Sentinel, Philly Inquirer, etc. The JJ being a Newhouse paper, we received copies of the Plain Dealer, Times-Picayune and Oregonian. The mid-’90s Times-Pic and Oregonian were firing on all cylinders visually, and I was able to compare my editing and visual choices in a kind of ongoing in-house tutorial. Since our page was 22.5 inches deep, I was often able to boost our story count to seven or eight without compromising a shred of good photo play, type heirarchy or page architecture. Further, I was able to bust the code in the Harris system to change our traditional one-column index box to two or three columns and refer more stories off the front than our traditional three-skybox scheme allowed. I also downplayed the bold all-cap lede headline we were saddled with in favor of using our serif hed larger.

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