The Olympic Games in Beijing, which have clearly become one of the highlights of the summer for viewers, sports fans and even non-sports folks, are getting massive coverage in America’s newspapers.

A review of Thursday’s front pages shows a clear split on how the stories are being played. East Coast papers that featured the Olympics on the cover focused on the incredible sprinter, Usain Bolt, while the West Coast papers that had the games on the cover went the volleyball route with photos of the bikini-clad Americans.

Once in a great while, the New York tabloids end up with the same clever headline on the front page.

Seems to us that readers ought to get a discount on those days.

Tabloid Tuesday is back. Our weekly look at the bold, often whacky tabloid newspaper covers found few similarities in photo or story choices this time around.

Those of us who are Chicago Bears fans especially liked the cover of Red Eye, the daily tab published by the Chicago Tribune.

The Seattle newspapers plan to raise their weekday price for single copies from 50 cents to 75 cents.

The Seattle Times story about the increase includes the following excerpt, which contains a humbling quote:

“At the City Market on Bellevue Avenue in Capitol Hill, manager Cain Moorehead said he had also received the memo notifying him of the price increase. The memo, dated Monday, said the new price included every day but Sunday.

“He doubted the price increase would affect his sales, which he said he does not track.

“ ‘We just put them out there," he said. "It's just newspapers.’ "

Ouch.

One of the true pleasures for newspaper editors is to watch the growth and development of our interns.

Four of last summer's interns, Jessica Meyers, Melissa Pamer, Sara Mahoney and Elida Perez, are doing well again this summer.

Jessica is interning at the Dallas Morning News, where she had a front-page story in Monday's paper about Texans getting bleary-eyed while watching so much of the Olympics on television.

Melissa is a full-time reporter at the Daily Breeze in Torrance, CA, where she had a front-page story in Monday's paper about a conflict among bicylists and motorists.

Elida is interning at the Statesman Journal in Salem. She wrote a timely piece earlier this month about how discount and consignment stores are seeing an upswing in customers who are dealing with tough economic times.

Sara was a design intern with the Orlando Sentinel this summer and recently accepted a full-time job with the Chicago Tribune. She'll be assigned to The Mash, a high school newspaper being launched this fall by the Trib.

All four of our former interns are very talented, energetic and personable. They represent an exciting new generation of journalists who are helping newspapers adjust to new market and industry challenges. We're very proud of them and look forward to following their careers from afar.

The Joseph Duncan trial continues to receive prominent newspaper coverage.

The Spokesman-Review played its staff-written story as its front-page lead on Friday. The Lewiston Tribune and the Coeur d'Alene Press used Associated Press coverage on their front pages.

Papers in other cities that have some connection to Duncan’s criminal past are relying on AP coverage, but most of it is landing inside the paper. Those papers include the Tacoma News Tribune and the Forum in Fargo, North Dakota. The Seattle Times and Boise’s Idaho Statesman are using AP coverage as well.

The Statesman had a staff reporter covering the opening arguments, but have since relied on AP. It appears the S-R's Betsy Russell may be the only newspaper reporter covering the trial in its entirety. Others are likely to pay more attention to closing arguments and the verdict.

The S-R's night cops reporter, Meghann Cuniff, has been in Boise most of the week, too, filing regularly via Twitter, the text messaging system. She's returning to Spokane this evening, but we expect to be sending her back to Boise as developments warrant them.

Tabloid Tuesday, our weekly look at interesting, compelling or whacky front pages of U.S. tabloid newspapers, turns serious today. The Russian attack on Georgia has dominated the international news headlines for several days.

We offer three tabloid covers today in addition to the Moscow edition of Pravda. All of these covers and hundreds more can be found on the Newseum site.

Mayors often find themselves in hot water. It seems the conditions for hizzoner in Detroit reached a boiling point this week with a one-night stay in a local jail.

Both Detroit newspapers gave dramatic play to the development on their Friday front pages.

Images courtesy of the Newseum website.

If you ask most sports editors in America, they probably would tell you they hate having the Olympics in Asia. Why? The time difference.

As I write this about 11 a.m. on Friday, it’s almost 2 a.m. Saturday in Beijing, site of this year’s Olympic extravaganza. That means that by the time we publish photos and results in Saturday’s paper, it’s really old news. But it is what it is and we can’t change the 15-hour time difference.
Afternoon papers actually have a better shot at presenting more timely information for this year’s events, but there aren’t that many PM papers around anymore. I could only find one today, my hometown paper in Fort Wayne, Indiana, really took advantage of its publishing cycle to offer photos and coverage from the opening ceremonies. You’ll find a couple of China-based front pages here as well. Front pages are courtesy of the Newseum site.

Should we put a colorful photo of the opening pageantry on our front page for Saturday?
And what’s the Vegas betting line on the badminton competition?

OK, the Brett Favre saga is worth one more day of front-page reviews. This will be the end of it, we promise.

The Green Bay paper has the boldest look on its cover with the black background. The understated approach of the New York Post is a bit surprising, while the New York Daily News resorted to the green theme, the Jets team color.

I should note, as usual, these pages are picked up from the Newseum website, where you can view the front pages of hundreds of newspapers around the world every day.

The summer-long drama involving football star Brett Favre and his desire to play again in the NFL would appear to be nearing a conclusion. But, as a famous baseball philosopher once said, “it ain’t over ‘till it’s over.”

Nevertheless, the Favre saga continues to be front-page news in Wisconsin and even Florida, where it’s rumored that Favre may play next.

Welcome to Tabloid Tuesday, our weekly look at some of the most arresting front pages of America’s sometimes wacky tabloid newspapers.

Today’s prize for most unusual design will be shared by two papers, the Chicago Sun-Times, which used a student’s artwork, and Newsday, which featured large headline type and a small image of a commercial airliner.

One of the biggest sports stories of the summer has been the ongoing saga of star quarterback Brett Favre and his return from retirement.

Favre’s arrival in Green Bay for training camp was especially big news in Wisconsin newspapers, documented here on Monday’s front pages of the Milwaukee Sentinel and the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

If you were editor of a daily newspaper in Wisconsin, would you put Favre’s return on the front page?

The federal indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was big news in political circles on Tuesday.

Wednesday’s Washington Post gave the story prominent play on page one, but the biggest splash is probably on the cover of the Anchorage Daily News. The New York Times used it as the lead story on its front page.

It’s Tabloid Tuesday, our weekly look at what those normally edgy daily tabloid newspapers have to entertain, inform or amuse us.

You’ll notice we always ignore the supermarket tabloids. We do have standards around here.

Our prize for the most creative headline goes to the Chicago Tribune’s Red Eye, with “unprotected text.”

As we all know, there are countless ways to make mistakes. The July-August issue of Columbia Journalism Review offers a variety of unfortunate headline gaffes:

2 STATES MAY SEE
DELEGATES HALVED

The New York Times

Schools can
expect more
students than
thought

Iowa City Press-Citizen

Army shifts
practice
bomb runs
at PTA

West Hawaii (Kailu-Kona)

Tamara
Greene’s
daughter is
12. She has
a 14-year-
old son

Detroit Free Press

Reporters
return to
Tibet after
rioting

Boulder Daily Camera

Barack Obama’s overseas trip has drawn significant attention and news coverage, capped off with yesterday’s speech in historic Berlin.

A number of U.S. papers, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and countless others, gave large play to photos showing Obama addressing a huge throng. Interestingly, at least to some of us, is the somewhat more muted front-page coverage in Friday’s German papers. See for yourself.

By the way, many of these front-page views are picked up from the Newseum website, where you can view hundreds of newspapers each day.

If you've read this far, you might be interested in joining the debate about the Obama campaign on Huckleberries Online. Dave asks this question:

Question: Do the large crowds and media praise generated by Barack Obama abroad in regions hostile to the U.S. influence how you might vote in the presidential election this year?

Just because a newspaper in a small town has fewer resources doesn't mean the staff can't do some impressive journalism.

Today's best example of that may be in Texas, where papers on the Gulf side are covering the heck out of Hurricane Dolly.

Take a look at Thursday's front pages of the newspapers in McAllen (circulation 35,000) and Lufkin (circulation 15,000) and compare them with the much bigger paper in Houston (circulation 500,000). If you were walking past a newstand and saw all three front pages, which ones would appeal to you the most?

Admittedly, we're making some key judgment here based mostly on photos, design and presentation, but first impressions matter to single copy buyers.

One of the most unusual front-page treatments of the day is the Omaha World-Herald's centerpiece Wednesday on the economy.

Reporter Steve Jordon compares the current economic conditions with those of 1982 in his lead story.

Drum roll please. It’s time for the wildly popular Tabloid Tuesday, the day when we take a look at those crazy, often irreverent but always entertaining daily newspapers in the tabloid format.

Tuesday’s highlights include a compelling presentation on Iraq and the presidential candidates on the cover of Newsday. My personal favorite is the Chicago Sun-Times, which features the contract extension for one of our favorite football players.

Thirty-nine years ago this week, U.S. astronauts for the first time set foot on the moon.

It's an anniversary that hasn't received much attention so far this year, except in San Jose. Some 400 scientists are gathered in the Silicon Valley this week to discuss future expeditions to the moon, so the Mercury deemed it appropriate to dust off an iconic photo of the historic event in 1989.

The story and photo gave extra pizzaz to the Monday newspaper.

Do newspapers devote too much attention on their front pages to new movies?

That’s a fair question. Movies represent a form of entertainment that has a long and colorful history in this country. Without being too philosophical, movies represent the best and worst of ourselves on a large-screen mirror of society. Movies generate a sort of community conversation. And many of them are simply just plain fun.

Newspapers across the country, including The Spokesman-Review, gave extensive front-page treatment to what is expected to be this summer’s blockbuster event, The Dark Knight. Of all the front pages we viewed this morning, only the Kansas City Star ignored the Batman flick and gave prominent attention instead to Mama Mia! Wonder what that says about the movie tastes in the Midwest.

A dramatic exchange of a convicted killer and four Hezbollah militants in return for the remains of two slain Israeli soldiers was big news on Wednesday in the Middle East.

A review of front pages published Thursday in the Middle East revealed stark contrasts in the coverage.

Yedioth Ahronoth, a paper published in Tel Aviv, featured a telling photo of Israelis gathered around a flag-draped coffin. However, in Beirut, the An-Naha newspaper showed the jubilant former captives reuniting with their countrymen

It's no secret that the economy is the most important domestic issue on the minds of most Americans these days.

The daily drumbeat of rising costs, a struggling stock market and a deepening mortgage and banking crisis is having a wilting effect on readers.

It's not uncommon to see the latest development on the economic front as the lead story in the next day's newspaper. Today's review of various front pages offers ample evidence that the story is dominating the news agenda.

It's time to look at front pages of free and paid tabloids across the country. The results are discouraging.

Only the New York Daily News chose a topic that readers outside its market would understand or be interested in. The St. Pete version of a freebie features teeth whitening, hardly a national issue these days.