In which two of my geeky interests collide:

Visual design, and the current state/future status of newspapers.

The Society for News Design has announced the winners of its 28th annual competition for the best-designed newspaper, and not one of the finalists is American. The winning papers are outstanding: crisp typography, interesting layouts, and gorgeous illustrations and infographics. The financial tables in the Estonian paper, Äripäev, make me want to weep with joy.

Meanwhile, the Columbia Journalism Review interviews the president of SDN, who had this to say about why no American papers won this year:

"You see a different attitude toward newspapering in other parts in the world. And I think that must have to do with them not dealing with the bottom line issue as much as American newspapers are. Most American papers are cutting at all costs and then sitting back and wondering why advertisers and the readers aren't coming. There is not yet even one leading newspaper chain willing to say that if we put our resources into building a better newspaper, making something that you can't miss, that is irreplaceable every day, then the readers will come and the advertisers will come. There's no doubt though that in these economic times, it takes guts and it takes someone really stepping forward to be a leader. Unfortunately, that's not happening in this country right now."

THANK YOU. Are you paying attention, The New York Times Company and you bastards running the LA Times?

(Also recommended: the third part of Frontline's recent series about the future of news and journalism.)