Every day, newspapers around the country upload their front pages to the Newseum's website. Being a news junkie and a data-mining enthusiast, I started downloading the PDFs of these front pages earlier this year and analyzing them.
In a year full of significant events, it can be tough to say what news was the most important. These PDFs, however, can tell us what was the biggest news...literally: For each of the 10 major newspapers below, I identified their five largest headlines — as measured by font size — from the second half of 2017.
It’s not a perfect approach — large fonts aren’t the only way to emphasize a story, and some typefaces look bigger than others at the same font size — but this metric has the advantage of being simple, and easy to understand.
(Note: For technical reasons, I wasn’t able to extract the headlines from the New York Times or the New York Post.)
The Wall Street Journal
#1: ‘It Was Just a Kill Box’ — Oct. 3 — 72.3pt font
#2, tied: Terror Strikes Barcelona — Aug. 18 — 67.4pt
#2, tied: Rain, Floods Deluge Texas — Aug. 28 — 67.4pt
#2, tied: Terror Rampage in New York — Nov. 1 — 67.4pt
#5, tied with 100+ more: Kabul Bomb Sows Carnage — Jun. 1 — 56.15pt
The Washington Post
USA Today
#1: CATASTROPHE — Aug. 28 — 128.94pt
#2: THE WALL — Sep. 20 — 127.71pt
#3: ‘A COWARDLY ACT’ — Nov. 1 — 109.48pt
#4: ‘AN ACT OF PURE EVIL’ — Oct. 3 — 104.65pt
#5: Gunman kills 26 at church service — Nov. 6 — 88.06pt
Los Angeles Times
#1: THIS TEAM! — Oct. 20 — 168.56pt
#2: ‘Like a blowtorch’ — Oct. 11 — 109.99pt
#3: A CITY PUMMELED — Aug. 28 — 106.40pt
#4: MEXICO JOLTED BY A DEADLY 7.1 QUAKE — Sep. 20 — 104.01pt
#5: MAYHEM IN VEGAS: ‘LIKE A WAR ZONE’ — Oct. 3 — 100.43pt
New York Daily News
#1: ALL EVEN — Oct. 10 — 329.54pt
#2: POISON BILL — Nov. 19 — 303.97pt
#3: PURE JOY — Oct. 12 — 301.81pt
#4: HIM AGAIN — Nov. 8 — 297.68pt
#5: GONE GIRL — Nov. 9 — 294.65pt
Chicago Tribune
#1: ‘ACT OF PURE EVIL’ — Oct. 3 — 125.4pt
#2: Out at home — Oct. 20 — 117.6pt
#3: TRUMP UNSCRIPTED — Aug. 16 — 110.4pt
#4: Trump’s victory lap — Dec. 21 — 108.9pt
#5: BRYZZNESS IS BOOMING — Oct. 7 — 102.3pt
Chicago Sun Times
#1: THAT’S WON! — Oct. 16 — 306.84pt
#2: FAKE PRESIDENT — Aug. 16 — 299.68pt
#3: FROM RUSSIA WITH ‘LOVE’ — Jul. 12 — 258.35pt
#4, tied: OT BLUES — Oct. 4 — 257.51pt
#4, tied: SODA FLOP — Oct. 7 — 257.51pt
The Dallas Morning News
#1: ‘Horrific tragedy’ — Nov. 6 — 134.74pt
#2: Moments in history — Jul. 7 — 129.98pt
#3: Only the start — Aug. 27 — 116.99pt
#4, tied: Devastating deluge — Aug. 28 — 113.46pt
#4, tied: Helping hands — Aug. 29 — 113.46pt
#4, tied: Starting to dig out — Sep. 1 — 113.46pt
San Jose Mercury News
#1: #MeToo — Oct. 22 — 209.67pt
#2: HOPE AMID THE ASHES — Nov. 12 — 125.42pt
#3: TECH’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET — Jul. 9 — 122.21pt
#4, tied: IRMA — ‘REALITY HAS SETTLED IN’ — Sep. 11 — 117.92pt
#4, tied: THE BIG REVEAL — Sep. 10 — 117.92pt
The Denver Post
#1: Guide to the eclipse — Aug. 21 — 141.73pt
#2: “ACT OF EVIL” — Nov. 6 — 124.52pt
#3: Grief, confusion — Oct. 3 — 118.52pt
#4: At a net loss — Sep. 10 — 116.6pt
#5: Oil in Colorado’s political machine — Jul. 16 — 109.8pt
You can find the code I used for this analysis on GitHub, and a few more details in this blog post.