Front Page News
Check out today's front pages from newspapers around the nation. The Indian Ocean tragedy is the major story, of course. Of 160 U.S. front pages presented there, 95 illustrate the tragedy with this picture: the woman holding her head in grief with the debris in the background. They made a good choice; the picture conveys something of both the material scale of the devastation and the human measure of suffering.
Dozens of pictures were available last night, when these pages were being put together. Some showed scenes of damage and debris, but frankly they were difficult to distinguish from hurricane photos. Some showed water in the streets, but that didn't convey the power of what evidently happened.
But check out the Anniston, Alabama, "Star." It's the very first paper on the top row (they are presented alphabetically by state, and alphabetically within each state). The "Star" chose one of the many pictures on the AP wire last night that showed people grieving over their dead children and relatives. As I scrolled through the leaf desk, those pictures told of the tragedy in a way none of the others did. They were raw and real, and the number of bodies piled up told the story like nothing else. But we don't put pictures of dead bodies in newspapers. Double-taboo breaking for the "Star" because one of the dead bodies in the background is a woman with a breast hanging out. (You probably can't see that on the blow-up on this site, but I saw this photo on the AP wire last night.)
The only other paper on the Newseum's site that ran the full photo was the Santa Rosa, Calif., "Press-Democrat."
Anniston is a very good paper, considering the size of the community it serves. I was told by people who know such things that it's one of the handful of smaller papers that the New York Times likes to hire from (this was in the 1980s; might not be true now). I once was offered a job there as a business writer, so I can tell you it's a thoughtful operation.
They went with a very graphic dead-bodies photo, in color, outside.
Did they make the right call? Does it matter that probably none of the dead people in this photo, or their families, will ever read the Anniston "Star"? Would they run this picture if the victims were from Mobile, not India?
The Great Falls "Tribune" in Montana (bottom row, second page) ran the same photo that Anniston and Santa Rosa used, but cropped out three-fourths of it -- including all the dead -- and just printed the wailing, grieving survivor woman. Better choice?
A few other papers also used dead body pictures, sometimes as a smaller, secondary element in their page one story: The LA "Daily News" ran a powerful picture of a man holding a dead child. The Philadelphia "Inquirer" ran a photo of people pulling a dead woman's body from the sea. The Austin "American-Statesman" ran the same photo.
The Akron "Beacon Journal" ran a small and relatively sanitary picture of bodies lined up in a morgue. The Detroit "Free Press" showed a corpse in a big picture, but only the feet were visible.
Of the dozens of heartbreaking images I saw last night on the wire, a few stuck with me and probably will for a long time. They rarely made it into the newspapers I see on this site. One shot, of a mother grieving over two beautiful little girls, is in today's Knoxville "News-Sentinel." That's about it.
But perhaps the most poignant photo in the whole presentation of page ones on the Newseum site is a one-column picture in both the San Jose "Mercury News" and the Sacramento "Bee" (both on the first page of the site). The entire photo shows a couple grieving over their dead child on a beach in Cuddalore, India. It seems to be a version of this Reuters photo. The editors cropped it down to just the face of the father, wrung with anguish, and the hand of the dead child, which he holds close to his face.
Dozens of pictures were available last night, when these pages were being put together. Some showed scenes of damage and debris, but frankly they were difficult to distinguish from hurricane photos. Some showed water in the streets, but that didn't convey the power of what evidently happened.
But check out the Anniston, Alabama, "Star." It's the very first paper on the top row (they are presented alphabetically by state, and alphabetically within each state). The "Star" chose one of the many pictures on the AP wire last night that showed people grieving over their dead children and relatives. As I scrolled through the leaf desk, those pictures told of the tragedy in a way none of the others did. They were raw and real, and the number of bodies piled up told the story like nothing else. But we don't put pictures of dead bodies in newspapers. Double-taboo breaking for the "Star" because one of the dead bodies in the background is a woman with a breast hanging out. (You probably can't see that on the blow-up on this site, but I saw this photo on the AP wire last night.)
The only other paper on the Newseum's site that ran the full photo was the Santa Rosa, Calif., "Press-Democrat."
Anniston is a very good paper, considering the size of the community it serves. I was told by people who know such things that it's one of the handful of smaller papers that the New York Times likes to hire from (this was in the 1980s; might not be true now). I once was offered a job there as a business writer, so I can tell you it's a thoughtful operation.
They went with a very graphic dead-bodies photo, in color, outside.
Did they make the right call? Does it matter that probably none of the dead people in this photo, or their families, will ever read the Anniston "Star"? Would they run this picture if the victims were from Mobile, not India?
The Great Falls "Tribune" in Montana (bottom row, second page) ran the same photo that Anniston and Santa Rosa used, but cropped out three-fourths of it -- including all the dead -- and just printed the wailing, grieving survivor woman. Better choice?
A few other papers also used dead body pictures, sometimes as a smaller, secondary element in their page one story: The LA "Daily News" ran a powerful picture of a man holding a dead child. The Philadelphia "Inquirer" ran a photo of people pulling a dead woman's body from the sea. The Austin "American-Statesman" ran the same photo.
The Akron "Beacon Journal" ran a small and relatively sanitary picture of bodies lined up in a morgue. The Detroit "Free Press" showed a corpse in a big picture, but only the feet were visible.
Of the dozens of heartbreaking images I saw last night on the wire, a few stuck with me and probably will for a long time. They rarely made it into the newspapers I see on this site. One shot, of a mother grieving over two beautiful little girls, is in today's Knoxville "News-Sentinel." That's about it.
But perhaps the most poignant photo in the whole presentation of page ones on the Newseum site is a one-column picture in both the San Jose "Mercury News" and the Sacramento "Bee" (both on the first page of the site). The entire photo shows a couple grieving over their dead child on a beach in Cuddalore, India. It seems to be a version of this Reuters photo. The editors cropped it down to just the face of the father, wrung with anguish, and the hand of the dead child, which he holds close to his face.
