Anatomy Of A Cover

C&EN’s cover highlights the most important story of each issue. We select or design cover art and text both for visual impact and clarity of message. The goal is to create an image that will make someone holding the magazine want to open the pages and read the cover story. We usually succeed, but sometimes our efforts backfire.

Certain stories are easier to represent on the cover than others. A recent example is the Oct. 21 profile of the celebrated chemist, author, and playwright Carl Djerassi. We knew way ahead of publication that a photograph of Djerassi would grace that cover, obviously. The only question was, which one? C&EN Creative Director Rob Bryson says he chose the one that in his mind captured Djerassi’s persona as revealed in the profile. Leaping out of a black background, Djerassi’s striking mien juxtaposed with the words “Longing to belong” signals a surprising disquiet in someone so accomplished.

Most stories are not so amenable to cover treatment. This week’s cover story on the employment outlook for 2014, for example, didn’t yield strong ideas for the cover until everyone agreed that it needed to show that chemists are waiting for the job market to really turn around. Bryson came up with three ways to represent that idea, and the best in our view is the one on the current cover.

Even more difficult are stories about intangible, multifaceted concepts. A good example is the Oct. 14 special report on risk assessment. In three stories, C&EN delved into the science behind assessing chemical safety, the arduous process of establishing a link between a chemical exposure and a health risk, and the sociological aspects of risk perception. For the cover, we settled on a collage of actual headlines from newspapers and other media that capture the negative messages about chemicals they spew to the public.

The collage accompanies C&EN’s own, larger headline: “Real Risks and False Alarms: Better ways to measure chemical hazards.” The intent was to signal skepticism at fear-mongering headlines because they are usually based on imperfect hazard assessments and to indicate that chemists are developing better assessment methods. Most readers probably saw the cover in the context we intended. Others took exception because one of the headlines was “Does Monsanto Cause Cancer?”

Daniel R. Wright, a science fellow at Monsanto, tells C&EN in a letter to the editor: “As an employee of Monsanto Company I am insulted; as a chemist and 30+ year member of the American Chemical Society I am highly disappointed. Why would you call out one company, and only one company, that produces chemicals with such a yellow journalistic item on your cover? If you are looking for shock value I suggest you should leave that role to periodicals such as The National Inquirer. You owe the employees of Monsanto an apology. The subject in your feature articles on risks from chemicals is an important topic. Nothing in the articles seems to address this unfair singling out of one company among the many that produce chemical products.”

We had no intention to cast aspersions on Monsanto, and I am sorry that the cover sent that unintended message. We will redouble efforts to avoid such a situation happening again.

Yet the intended message of the Oct. 14 cover remains: People’s fears of chemicals often arise from poor assessments that raise false alarms. Although I understand why some find these headlines upsetting, my hope is that they would have been equally upset had they seen the headlines as they appeared in the original publications, and upset enough to write and challenge the validity of scary conclusions that are carelessly tossed around.

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