MURDER BEATING ABUSED KILL; P-I Rocks Out Its Headline

Well, it was certainly eye catching. We tried to walk past the P-I on a newsstand yesterday and it might as well have reached out with with a cluster of fish hooks to our eyeballs. What kind of a headline was that? A bunch of different colors, a bunch of different weights, a bunch of different sizes; it had it all and it took up the entire front page. When we first saw it we thought we'd come across the special retirement home edition or something, but we looked around and they all were printed like that.

It's big and garish and border-line obscene and we love it. We hoped they'd stick with it but this morning's edition marked a sad return from our vacay in bizzaro world and a tired old "Congress Fumes Over 'Big Brother'" headline is all they're offering. We looked at the letters page to find some solidarity in our support for Bizzaro Headlines, but nothing. Maybe the grandmas who could read the P-I's headline for the first time in twenty years are having trouble finding their stationary.

P-I, please, bring it back. We could almost even subscribe to a paper with headlines like that.

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By Dan in News on May 12, 2006 10:30 AM

Comments [rss]

Robin Evans

Yeah, but the SF Examiner went that way only after the monopolistic Hearst Corp dumped it, bought the Chron, and cancelled the two papers' JOA. Since the monopolistic Hearst still enjoys a JOA here with the monopolistic Times, they may as well try something to kickstart the thing -- if only to get better terms for the paper's eventual death.

I agree they should go with frequent headlines like this on the broadsheet while they try to convince the Times to print it as a tabloid. Go out with some fight and spirit, I say.

Michael

That's the direction the SF Examiner went to distinguish itself from the Chron. (Here's a beautiful pdf example.) It was a grudging slide, involving a number of redesigns, and led to it becoming a free daily. In 2004 the Fangs sold to Philip Anschutz and it's been insulting finer sensibilities ever since.

Seth

If there's a chance in hell that the P-I could compete with the monopolistic Times, it would be by changing into a tabloid. Give us some gossip, some left-slanted bias--something! If I were a consultant I would say you need DIFFERENTIATION IN THE MARKETPLACE!!!