On November 5, the day after the 44th Presidential election, newspaper subscribers opened their front doors to a newly printed piece of history. Pedestrians gazed at historic headlines in newspaper boxes, ranging from President-elect Barak Obama’s campaign slogans to civil rights themes, to a single name. The Newseum features 724 front pages from 66 countries in their online feature “Today’s Front Pages” Wednesday, November 5. If you were curious to know Oprah’s favorite…the Chicago Sun-Times front page with the headline “Mr. President”.

However, the example that took me most by surprise was not posted on the Newseum’s Web site. The headline reads “Barak Obama” in small type and “HISTORY” in large bold letters spanning a photo of Obama waving to the crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park. As the text runs off the photo, it symbolically turns from white to black. Talk about content-inspired design! This front page belongs to the Mint, a business newspaper in India launched in collaboration with The Wall Street Journal in 2007 with a circulation of about 133,000. In addition to the five print editions of the paper, an online version was created called “Livemint”. Here I found the fascinating article “The making of an Obama front page.”

According to Livemint, planning for the front page started nearly a week before Election Day and involved about a dozen different ideas. Mint art director Abel Robinson “had to work without knowing exactly what images [he] would finally get or if the page would have an ad on it (plus a backup plan if John McCain pulled off an upset).” See how the page evolved here.

There are many more stories that can be told of front pages from this historic event, each representing the people and the geographic region of the paper. For example, one Texas newspaper didn’t put Obama’s win on the front page. But most papers were selling off the racks in record numbers. The Washington Post printed an extra 350,000 copies of the special edition. And the The New York Times, with the headline “OBAMA”, is selling for a pricey $14.95.

If you didn’t save yours, The Indianapolis Star is offering its historic election edition for sale at local Kroger stores as well as a 2008 Election Souvenir Pack online, complete with a poster reprint of the November 5 front page. The Star also offers advice on how to preserve your newsworthy work of art:

• Lay the newpaper flat. Do not store with paper folded along the middle. The fold is the first place a newspaper will decay and discolor.
• Store in an acid- free paper folder available at most art and office stores.
• Keep paper away from extremes in temperature or humidity. Do not put the paper in a plastic bag for storage in an attic or basement where it will decay.
• If framing, use an acid free matte and UV-3 Plexiglas, which protect paper form most of ultraviolet rays and prevents discoloring and fading.

Given my experience, I figured helping produce a book about a place I thought I knew pretty well would be easy—especially since in its first incarnation, it was going to consist of 125 vignettes about people, collections, events, and departments that had helped shape the museum’s history. Little did I know what was in store for us. Over the first few months, everything seemed to be going just fine—each writer was assigned topics to research and write about. Like chunks of firewood, the stories began to stack up.

Now, one thing I’ve learned over the years about researching books is to resist tangents, as much as possible. Research is a seductive pastime. In the course of tracking down the information you need, you’re apt to uncover some other information you don’t—letters written by someone who’s central to your research, but who’s writing about subjects that have little or nothing to do with your needs. But a well-written letter is like a drug: it pulls you in, lulls you into thinking you’ve uncovered something vitally interesting, then distracts you from your task at hand. And suddenly you’re off on a tangent—which may well lead you to another, then another… well, you see the drug correlation.

That’s what happened with the IMA project. Each of us involved got seduced by one topic or another, and we all began writing pieces much longer than they were supposed to be. That wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was going to make a book much longer than we had anticipated. By late 2007 it was clear that we needed to rethink the book’s organization: instead of 125 individual stories, we realized that what we needed to do was cover the IMA’s 125-year history chronologically, integrating much of the text we’d written already into a cohesive narrative. But by that time, two of the original writers had finished the work they’d contracted to do, so they left the project.

The remaining two of us then took on the task of weaving together much of the previously written material—and doing more research to fill in the gaps of the larger story we had chosen to tell. This time there was no time to get seduced by research. We had a book to get done, and not a lot of time left to do it. Well, you can guess how the story ends—with some adjustments to the design and production schedules and the help of two very fine editors, we got it done. It will be available in early October. It’s titled Every Way Possible. Watch for it.

Looking back at the moment when I signed on to the project, I have to smile. Did I really think it was going to be as easy as it sounded at the time? Of course not. But I didn’t think it would become as difficult as it did. Yet I’ve enjoyed the entire process. The pleasure of doing a book is that, no matter how much you think you know about the subject when you start, by the time you finish you’ve learned a lot more—not only about the subject, but about yourself. A book pushes and prods you to go beyond what you’ve done before, to develop new skills, to become better professionally and personally. This one certainly did.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It still does.

After an IDADA “First Friday” filled with downtown gallery tours — Road Trip at the Harrison Center, Square One at Stutz Art Space, Focus: Midwest at MiCo, Television Hates Itself in the Sidecar Gallery of the Big Car Gallery — you might think the local media would be full of rave reviews or uninspired remarks.

But alas, Indy hasn’t had an art critic for as long as anyone I talked to can remember. Unfortunately, this news is common as papers across the country are eliminating art critics from their press. Just this week the chief dance critic for the Los Angeles Times was canned. Paul Hodgins of The Arts Blog writes:

There’s a pervasive feeling among many decision-makers at newspapers that arts coverage doesn’t matter anymore – or, more accurately, that it’s not important to the kind of readers they’re trying to reach.

In his post “Now more than ever, newspapers need arts coverage,” Hodgins notes that most papers are measuring the success of their content by how well it does online, and in turn, change their printed paper to reflect that success:

In this regard, a lot of arts stories just don’t measure up. There’s no way to justify publishing a review of a show at a small storefront theater from a reader-interest point of view. No matter how you market or display that kind of piece, its readership will remain small.

Hodgins goes on to say that most Editors aren’t taking into account the source or quality of the Web hits by which they are measuring a story’s success.

The Indianapolis Star used to have several arts reporters and now has an arts & entertainment reporter and a performing arts writer. It does not have an art critic. It does, however, have a sports critic (columnist Bob Kravitz). Note: reporters gather news and write objectively, while columnists have the freedom to criticize and commentate as specialists on a topic. As a graduate of Butler’s Journalism Program, I have a strong sense of public service as the foundation for media coverage, instilled in me by Dr. Kwadwo Anokwa. It is essential for journalists to engage in the culture of the local community, and this includes comprehensive coverage and criticism of the local arts. Not only would this be beneficial to the success of local artists, musicians and performers, but it also makes economic sense by fostering art patrons and elevating our city to the national stage.

While Indianapolis waits for its own art critic, you can pass the time by reading your art reviews in The New York Times from the talented Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith.

Image courtesy of Ricardo Biriba, “art critic” sketch, 2006. Web site: http://www.biriba.net/