From The Editor: Caring for the details key to historic front pages

Chronicling history with our newspaper and especially our front page is a job we take seriously. Lately, we've had a lot to chronicle: a national election with America at a crossroads, a siege of the U.S. Capitol and the inauguration of a new president.

Plus, another impeachment of a president — the second in 13 months, and the third in about 22 years.

The design of front pages chronicling such big moments in history really is simple: Big (really big) headline, big photo, maybe a second photo and a few articles.

Then it's the details we sweat over. First, we tend to apply layers of smaller headlines (“subheads” or “deck heads” we call them) to capture the many big angles of the news. In recent years Assistant News Editor Sean Stangland, one of our front page designers, has led us on the layered approach. If I look at my old books showing some of the biggest newspaper front pages in history, I see that layered headlines are a fine tradition. Look at The New York Times and you'll see them every day, even if smaller. They let us tell you a lot quickly.

The front page design for the House making President Donald Trump's second impeachment official on Jan. 13 actually started with Sean's concept of a “Trump resigns” front page — yes, we prepared one in the week before amid reports that even some Republicans were suggesting the president should do so.

We agonize over the words we use in the layered headlines. We want to convey key facts but also capture the accurate level of urgency or importance without attitude or slant. Our first deck head under “Impeached Again” noted the historically significant fact that it was the first second impeachment for a single president. The next deck head addressed the question of whether the Senate would start the trial even as the president's term ended — and whether there seemed to be any real chance of conviction (leading Republican Mitch McConnell said he was “open” to it, not that he wanted or expected it, a key distinction). And finally we noted how most House Republicans still stuck with Trump.

The two separate articles each were topped with yet another headline. We did the same with Trump's first impeachment on the Dec. 19, 2019, front page.

It turns out the 2021 impeachment front page bore a resemblance to our front page on Dec. 20, 1998, capturing the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. On both we felt we had to include an article on huge Illinois news. In 1998 it was the sudden ascendancy of Yorkville congressman Dennis Hastert to the U.S. House speakership. In 2021 it was the end of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan's long reign.

Finally we adorned all these front pages with either notable quotations or teasers (or “refers,” which we pronounce “reefers”) to more stories inside, or both. We select the teasers carefully and consider every word for them, too.

We recognize the big moments in history, and we know you do, too — such that you might even want to save these front pages. So we work carefully to give them their due.