Front Page Friday: Contra Costa Times

It is that time of the week again. It is time to look at my favorite newspaper front page of the week.

As always, I culled through the front pages shown at Newseum.org and picked my favorite.

So here it is:

Contra Costa Times

This is the front page of the Contra Costa Times from April 9, 2010 (via Newseum.org).

OK. This post is going to be short and sweet.

I chose today’s front page of the Contra Costa Times, which is published in Walnut Creek, Calif., and is a San Jose Mercury News publication. I chose it for two, simple reasons: it had an eye-catching picture on the front, and it wasn’t focusing on the Tiger Woods at the Master’s Golf Tournament drama (I am refraining from ranting about Tiger right now, but rest assured, I feel a post bubbling because I don’t really like Tiger Woods).

There was a little bit of Tiger coverage on the bottom of the page, and I can live with that. It’s a fairly big story. I’m just tired of seeing it played in the media as if it is the only story.

And as for the eye-catching art piece, check out that photo of a guy sliding down a zip line in San Francisco. That thing looks pretty cool, and it drew me in because I think doing that sounds like a blast.

So, those two parts to this design had me interested, but you know what got me hooked? The cutline of the zip line photo.

It says one of the paper’s staff writers got to ride the zip line and write a first-hand account of what it is like.

That sealed it for me. This was my pick because as a journalist, I would love such an opportunity, so I wanted to promote it to everyone I could because readers will respond to those types of stories.

Some of my columns I’ve gotten the most responses about where when I wrote about an experience. I never got to ride a zip line, but even encounters with snakes made for good reading, according to my audience.

Zip lines probably would have been even better.

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About toddvogts 833 Articles
Todd R. Vogts, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of media at Sterling College in Kansas. Previously, he taught yearbook, newspaper, newsmagazine, and online journalism in various Kansas high schools, and he ran a weekly newspaper in rural Kansas. He continues to freelance as a professional journalist from time to time. Also, Vogts is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), the Journalism Education Association (JEA), and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), among others. He earned his Master Journalism Educator (MJE) certification from JEA in 2022. When he’s not teaching or writing, he runs his mobile disk jockey service and takes part in other entrepreneurial ventures. He can be reached at twitter.com/toddvogts or via his website at www.toddvogts.com.