President-elect Obama Photo Sparks Contraversy

The Sun Sentinel used this Getty Images photo on the front page a week ago.

“How could the Sun-Sentinel carried a picture of the president elect, his wife Michelle and his youngest daughter Sasha and omit the oldest daughter, Malia?” asked Gloria Glinton in an e-mail sent in to the newspaper.

Many other readers called and wrote us, saying that our choice of a victory picture for Wednesday morning's paper disappointed them.

I complete understood. I have three kids and I would have hated for one of my son's to be out of a historical front page photo. But, I'm also realistic and understand the challenges that papers face with deadlines, differences in aesthitics and pre-design pages.

Here's why we chose that shot:

-Aesthetic: The picture shows the joy in President-elect Obama’s face, while also giving a sense of a flag-waving crowd cheering for Obama’s historic win. His wife and younger daughter provide additional layers of storytelling with their expressions.

Because of the side stage shooting position of the AFP photographer, Timothy A. Clary, the oldest daughter was blocked in this shot.

-Deadlines: Deadlines are not set by the newsroom, but by the pressroom, which needs time to print the newspaper and get it to the hands of those who deliver and sell it. We had a deadline extension on Tuesday, but by the time President-elect Obama took the stage with his family around midnight and the first photographs started coming in on the wires about 15 minutes later, we had about five minutes to choose a vertical picture from the few then available, move it to the designer to put it on the page and send it to the presses for printing.

-Pre Design: We knew that election results would come in late, so we had to designed the paper in advance taking into account multiple scenarios (A clear winner, a meltdown, no clear winner). If we had a clear winner the pre-design required us to edit for a vertical photo, but most of the first photographs moved were horizontal images of the family.

During the small window of time we had, we decided on the best vertical photograph we saw on the wires at that time and went with it.

What do you think?