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These are the only three words repeated on both our front pages on Saturday, July 6, 2019.
With our NAIDOC Week 2019 special edition front pages we wanted to capture people's attention.
To give you a bit of an insight we design our print edition front pages to capture attention. A wise old editor once said you design your front pages to attract the glance of the "casual buyers".
People are generally making a split decision at a news stand whether to pick up your publication or not. Our front pages are designed to capture that attention. Some traditional industry people frown at this approach as there is not enough words on the front.
To be blunt, and this is not easy for a journalist to say, words are not always as important as the overall image. It's essentially about catching the eye and nothing is more eye-catching than an image. Magazines worked that out ages ago and newspapers have been slower to catch on.
In this case the words were important because the words form the actual image. And these are not just any words. These are Dharawal words. We not only hoped the front page inspired people to pick it up the edition and read the content within, but we hope it made people think about the power of words. How words can help heal.
We must pay a special thank you to indigenous educator Jodi Edwards who helped us with the words for the front page. Jodi is working at revitalising the Dharawal language and is hoping to get to a stage where it is taught in Illawarra schools.
Our concept for this year's NAIDOC Week special edition built on a concept started with last year's 'Because of Her We Can' front page.It is now an Illawarra Mercury tradition