“All The News That Fits”

Print magazine recently established a “First Person” feature, in which a chosen artist, designer, illustrator or photographer creates timely, original works that challenge the conventions of traditional reportage. Paula Scher completed a series of drawings titled “All the News That Fits” for the magazine’s January/February 2004 issue. The drawings are colored pencil on newsprint and reproduce headlines from the news pre- and post-9/11, from January 2001 through August 2003.

Scher’s description of the piece: “For at least a decade, I’ve noticed that the tone and tenor of the news sounds pretty much the same, regardless of what’s going on. There is never any negative space in the news. The news always expands to fill its given format. Stories repeat in a background hum to fill dead air. If news stories are new and serious, the hum gets louder and more specific as bigger stories crowd out smaller stories. But the formats are always the same size.
“After 9/11 the news abruptly switched from a background of sex to a background of terror, without missing a beat.”

Obsessively brilliant combination of writing and illustration.