putting lipstick on the pig that is the agate page

we've been getting the squeeze in space lately and are moving national briefs to our agate page. aside from just adding a photo to go with those briefs, does anybody have some ideas on dressing the page up?

 

Have you tried using wild art in the agate page? That pretty much is the only way I've ever dressed up an agate page aside from using in-house art/structured elements

 

Until our page began to be produced off site, we used to drop in an unusual photo as a standalone. It might be a strong secondary photo from a local event, or more likely, a great national or international photo you might not otherwise get to use from an event you might not otherwise acknowledge: snowboarding, soccer, a wacky fan shot...it got to be pretty popular pretty quickly, and drew readers into a gray page.

 

How about running a quote of a day with a mug or trivia fact?

 

That can be tricky. An old shop used to do that as part of the 1C rail, and we screwed it up more than you would hope. Not worth the corrections it generated, unless someone is going to provide it on a daily basis. Typically it's the desk that is tasked with finding something. The standalone photo is a good option, for the reasons huntsie points out. There are almost always cool shots that wouldn't get in otherwise, but there will be days when you will not have a wide selection.

 

And the standalone is completely flexible.
Whatever column width is needed, but nothing that has to run every day.

 

You people have time to flip through the AP wire to look at photos?

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Take me with you!

 

Actually, that would be an issue now. We had several more folks on the desk when we were running photos with the agate page/briefs package. Hell, most places don't have the space for an agate page anymore either.

 

You can always utilize art within agate page, and it's effective to use NFL logos and NBA logos as designators for the standings in those two respective sports, just like MLB standings. If you have the luxury to have an agate page, AP agate is also useful.