For two months, the front page of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was a puzzle to me.
“It’s symbolism,” one reporter explained when I asked why the front page layout 1) is ALWAYS identical, and 2) why the featured front page photograph NEVER depicts war, violence, crime, highway bash-ups, perp walks or any of the other incidents that papers in the U.S. rely on.
“You really have to read the cutline,” she added.
Symbolism. Must read the cutline. With those two factors, FAZ editors demand that readers not only view the front page, but also interact with it.
My reaction: “Huh?”
But, bolstered by a dedication to cross-cultural (trans-Atlantic, the Burns fellowship people would say) understanding, and a growing trust in the people who put out this German institution each day, I began to read the cutlines. Every day.
Even so, the concept didn’t clearly make sense until the FAZ photo editor invited me and my husband (a former photojournalist) to visit his offices.
We were greeted on the second floor with a series of amazing shots one FAZ photographer snapped on Sept. 11, 2001, when he was in New York City to cover fashion week. He came back not with glimpses of Lagerfeld and Versace, but with the story of a lifetime.
Herr Jung, the photo editor, moved us on to a wall of FAZ front pages and began to explain his process for selecting The Front Page Photograph – arguably the most important piece of the modern FAZ. This newspaper didn’t begin allowing photos on the front page until a few years ago. But when it did, editors decided to try something different.
A few examples:
1. A close-in shot of a housewife scraping spaetzle (a mainstay in German cuisine) into a pot. The headline: Flour, eggs. salt. The cutline: Angela Merkel (Germany’s chancellor) needs only a few basic items to run this country.
2. An X-ray of the neck portion of a spinal cord, turned sideways and looking strategically like a racecar. The story: A famous race car driver whose neck had been injured wants to get back into the races.
3. A close-up of the fingerprint of a government official. The story: The government official was amid a tough fight pertaining to privacy.
4. A polar bear buries its head in the snow. The story: Failure to reach an agreement at climate change conference.
“It was risky, but now many people would say they can’t imagine the FAZ without this front page photo,” Jung said.
Jung’s explanation made me feel so proud to be part of an industry that, despite storms constantly gathering that threaten us, and a never-ending barrage of Gallup polls insisting that no one cares about or trusts the media (My dream Gallup poll headline: “Gallup poll finds that real journalists usually know better what readers need to know that do the readers themselves.”), continues to innovate, even on that old-fashioned broadsheet paper. At the FAZ, they do it with well-honed instincts about what makes readers buzz. They do it with humor, and with a deep understanding of what’s important.
Thank you, FAZ!
