Brexit Shocker: Front Pages From Around the World as Newspapers Struggled to Catch Up

To give you a sense of the shock of the Brexit vote to many within the U.K., consider Friday's front page of the early edition of The Guardian, the first newspaper shown in our gallery below. The headline reads "Party leaders reach out to divided nation after bitter EU referendum," and the story begins, David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn are preparing to reach out today to the millions of British people who voted to leave the EU, as they seek to heal the wounds of a bitterly fought referendum that has divided the nation. An opinion poll published at 10pm yesterday suggested that undecided voters had shifted towards backing the prime minister's call for Britain to remain a member of the European project in the final days of the battle. The front page of the late edition of The Guardian, the second in our gallery, shows a photo of stunned Brits reacting to the vote to leave the European Union paired with the headline "Cameron faces fight for survival as Britain sets course for Brexit." After that edition went to press, Prime Minister Cameron announced he will resign. Other newspapers around the world were ill-prepared for the Brexit news, given that they too relied on misleading exit-poll data. Austria's Kurier, for example, went to press with an English-language headline, "And now?," along with a vintage photograph of a gobsmacked John Cleese in character as a Monty Python cast member, but the German subhead translates to, "According to exit polls, the British voted for remaining in the EU...." Today's New York Times national edition, curiously, puts the Brexit news "below the fold" (below the top half of the front page); the banner headline across the top reads "SPLIT COURT STIFLES OBAMA ON IMMIGRATION." But for the New York edition of the paper -- where readers on Wall Street in particular are freaking out about the news -- Brexit gets the top, all-cap banner headline: "BRITISH STUN WORLD WITH VOTE TO LEAVE E.U." (The immigration headline appears just below it.) Back in Britain, some newspapers were at the ready with celebratory covers, including The Sun, with its "See EU Later" front page, and the Daily Mail, which, under a giant "WE'RE OUT!" headline, added "After 43 years UK freed from shackles of EU."

Brexit Shocker: Front Pages From Around the World as Newspapers Struggled to Catch Up

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