How I Depicted Sexual Assault on the Front of a Newspaper
My day job is technically a student, but before I tell people that, I say I’m the Editor in Chief of the Charger Bulletin, the student news source of the University of New Haven.
One of my many jobs is to design and layout the print edition of our newspaper that we publish every two weeks. I spend about 10–12 hours each Monday of a publishing week putting everything together on my computer while my eyes disintegrate from looking at a computer that long. Possibly my favorite part of this process is coming up with the front page.
The front page of a newspaper is iconic. It’s the biggest story of the day, week, month, year, etc. boiled down into a few words and a couple images. But those few words? They sum up a story that could have enourmous consequences in the “real world” and make you think, bend down, and pick up that paper, just as the eye-catching photo makes you walk over in the first place.
We conducted a survey last year to see what made students at UNH pick up our paper. And a significant majority of respondants said it was the front page. I don’t say that to promote my design skills, especially because they don’t exist. I say it because it’s true. The Charger Bulletin isn’t subscription based. It doesn’t fall on your doorstep whether you like it or not. The front page is everything.
Here are some examples of previous front pages: https://issuu.com/chargerbulletin
So this week, November 7, our biggest story was the student stories on sexual assault and harassment shared with our reporters. It’s an incredibly timely and sensitive issue. It’s hard to keep up every day with all of the allegations by victims, mainly toward celebrities. Several brave students shared their stories with us, describing times when they were sexually harassed, how they dealt with it, and how they still deal with it today. A reminder: these are students, some of whom aren’t old enough to drink legally. Young.
So I have our big story, and I need a front page that will attract people into the paper and care about what’s in it. I need something that represents the issue. I need something that is eye-catching. I need a handful words that sum up this issue into something concise and meaningful.
No pressure.
How can I adequately fulfill those requirements? What image can I use to represent sexual assault? I obviously can’t use a photo of actual sexual assault happening, and using a stock photo of a predatory male onto a female is just corny and presumptuous, among other problematic things. So what am I left with?
And what am I supposed to say that will represent decades of sexual harassment that has been stigmatized and silenced by a bigoted society? How can I tell these students’ stories — stories that have changed their lives — in just a few words?
At this point, the front page is blank. Looking at that blank page got me thinking: if I can’t depict sexual assault in a photo and a graphic, then why try? So I didn’t.
Likewise, I thought, “how did these brave women express themselves to epitomize their experience with sexual assault?” Well, as over a million people across the world did, they said, “me too.”
So I had it. No photo. The only words would be “Me too.” Blank newspaper is to a journalist/editor as dead air is to a radio host or a wrong note is to a musician: it can’t happen, and you cringe when it does. I decided to make the entire front page black. No “The Charger Bulletin,” no social media plugs, no tagline. And it looked like this:
At a small college newspaper, you tend to think that the issues you deal with are small, too. It’s almost like a little kid wanting to hang out with his big bro. The kid is smart, can fend for himself, but his older brother always hangs out with the big kids, who get to ride bikes by themselves and put their books in a locker instead of a cubby. You know when you’re this kid. You’re ready for more, if only the big kids would see you.
How can the Charger Bulletin, with an approximate audience of 7,000, compete with the New York Times, who has a global audience of millions? We can’t. But the point isn’t to compete, it’s to be the voice for your own audience. The NYT, WaPo, and others, are the voice of the country and the world. We are the voice of the University of New Haven, and the stories we tell will always reflect that.
And it all starts on the front page.