The story behind the cover story

Over the past 20 years, the paper’s designers created 1,040 covers.

 

Most weeks, the cover image reflects the top story of the week, usually a centerfold feature but sometimes a general news story. In reviewing 1,040 past covers, we initially thought we would highlight the most aesthetically appealing covers from each year. And we’ve created some great covers, especially covers that highlight action

sports, pets, and landscapes. We’ve also had a few flops, like the Christmas edition “Merry Cockroach!” cover from 2004. 

 

But, as we reviewed 20 years of front pages, we discovered that page one stories and images ranged from tragedy to joy, from national and international events impacting us locally to high school graduations, from pets to fires, club news to political news, from tennis to duck races. So instead of selecting beautiful images only, we tried to select 20 covers that reflect the breadth of news and features that appeared between the pages.

 

For a few years during the Great Recession, we were publishing small papers and opted to forgo our cover images altogether and used the front page for stories.

 

On our earliest covers, our masthead was simply written in Times New Roman font. We created our current masthead with the palm tree “D” in mid-2005.

 

Enjoy a trip through the past one cover at a time, ranging from our first edition in 2003 to one of our 2022 editions.