Putting readers in the picture on spending cuts

Getting across the scale of the new government's cutbacks to public expenditure is a challenge for newspapers. Many have opted for double-page spreads today listing the savings to be made by each department. However, today's Independent front page presents the scale of the UK's national debt in graphic form – very literally as a mountain. It's a striking image of the scale of the problem – and the easy-to-miss £6bn of 'savage cuts' in the bottom right cleverly makes a point. It's definitely one of the paper's strongest recent single-issue front pages. When it comes to breaking down the cuts by department, the paper opts for a more traditional list approach (see above). In contrast, the Guardian provides a vivid visualisation of the scale of the cuts (below), much in the vein of its excellent Factfile UK supplement series. The small red axes illustrating the scale of the cuts to each department are a neat touch. Incidentally, axes also seem to be popular material for papers' cartoonists, appearing in no fewer than four of the broadsheets over the past two days.