Why no earthquake fronts today?
A number of folks have asked me if I’m doing a roundup today of front pages covering the gigantic earthquake Tuesday in Haiti.
The simply answer: I flitted through the pages posted today at the Newseum and I wasn’t impressed with any of them. The quake and its aftershocks — which, most likely, killed thousands and thousands of residents — was played across four columns by the papers that displayed it best. The photos weren’t spectacular and neither were the headlines. And a number of papers didn’t play it out front at all.
I’m not necessarily criticizing the way newspapers played the quake. I’m just saying I didn’t see much worthy of singling out. Therefore, I won’t.
Here’s how not to play this story, though — on the front of the Observer of Kingston, Jamaica:
Gene Mater of the Newseum’s own daily Top Ten Front Pages feature writes about this page:
Special mention goes to the Daily Observer in Kingston, Jamaica, for its graphic headline.
To which I reply: Wrong. Bad idea. That headline treatment seems flip and light-hearted. Completely inappropriate, especially, for a tragedy of this magnitude.
Would you put graphic bullet holes through a story about a family gunned down in their home? Would you have water pouring through a page and the headline type floating away with a story like Katrina or the Tsunami? No you wouldn’t.
And neither should you do this.
January 13th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
This would be appropriate if it was a funny earthquake that didn’t kill people. Like the Earthquake in Ghostbusters I that made the ghosbusters fall into the hole. “Earthquake shakes up Ghostbusters” with the word Earthquake or Ghostbusters all cracked up…
January 13th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
I completely agree about the treatment of the Daily Observer’s headline treatment. Cool idea if you are talking about a movie about earthquakes or something like that. But not an actual earthquake that killed thousands. Bad call.
January 13th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
I also understand that this photo was killed by AP. I wonder if this is where it ended up or they used it despite the AP kill notification.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
I completely agree, Charles. I actually just posted a comment on the link, which is on the Newseum’s Facebook page.
January 13th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
The key to this puzzle is the squished Planet earth that has been trapped in the ‘O’ of Observer since 1987. Everything else here makes sense once you notice that.
January 13th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Squished ‘very dark’-skinned people don’t sell papers. Wait for the same thing to happen to Los Angeles and you’ll see a different response.
January 13th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
I thought about writing a fairly detailed explanation as to why a Los Angeles earthquake would get different treatment than the Haiti earthquake, but then I thought …”that’s ridiculous” would be sufficient.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:38 am
There are no earthquake A1s on Wednesday because the massive extent of the quake wasn’t clear until about 9:30 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday, too late for East and Midwest papers.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:52 am
I agree with the timeline to an extent but I truly believe that some of the cutbacks in our industry made the biggest difference in getting reporters and photographers on the ground quickly.
Most US newsrooms have been cut to the bare bones and neither have staff that can react quickly redesigning pages or web content.
The earliest reports came from Canadian reporters and photographers along with freelancers.
On the photo end, Getty and Reuters had a commanding lead over others in providing early images of the quake.
The challenging part of this coverage was that the earliest reports came from social networking sties “Twitter” and “Facebook” which supplied much factual information but some that was not.
Having spent a career covering national and some international news, my hope is that Aric’s comment is not the reality of our business.