A roundup of Tuesday’s earthquake front pages from the U.S. and Latin America
It’s Day Three of newspaper coverage of the aftermath of the huge earthquake in Chile. And already, we’re seeing a lot of the same images, over and over, on the fronts of newspapers all over the world posted at the Newseum.
Does the news media not have adequate access to the regions struck hardest? Is the damage not as great as what we saw a few weeks ago in Haiti? Or are the world’s newspapers simply weary of running earthquake damage photos as lead art on page one?
I’ll restrain myself today and show you only 17 front pages from the U.S. and Latin America, starting with the two dailies in Chile.
El Mercurio of Santiago ran a large picture today of armed personnel vehicles patrolling around the central business district of Concepción, where heavy looting has taken place:
Reports say 10,000 troops have been called up to stop the kind of looting we saw on Monday’s front pages. The photo is by Mario Quilodrán — presumably of the el Mercurio staff.
The other big daily in Santiago — La Tercera — ran an even more dramatic photo of the same scene, shot by Claudio Santana of Agence France-Presse:
O Globo of Rio de Janerio, Brazil, used that same photo to great effect:
The Los Angeles Times led with a five-column photo of a store in Constitucion that had been reduced to rubble:
The picture was by Times staffer Michael Robinson Chavez. The LAT circulates 657,467 copies daily.
Comércio of Franca, Brazil, turned this nice picture by Claudio Santana of AFP into a poster-like front:
Hoy of Quito, Ecuador, featured a picture from EFE of a man picking through debris in Dichato, which was smashed by both the quake and a tsunami:
Boats strewn across the countryside seemed to be the big picture of the day. This picture — also taken in Dichato — is by Natacha Pisarenko of the Associated Press:
The paper, of course, is the Miami Herald, circulation 162,260.
I’m unclear where this photo was taken. The markings on the boat are the same as in the Miami Herald photo, so I’ll guess Dichato as well:
That’s La Hora of Quito, Ecuador. There is neither a credit nor a caption for the picture. The deck notes that the body of an Ecuadorian national killed in the quake cannot be returned because of health issues.
Here’s a shocking image, also from the AP and shot in the port city of Talcahuano. It shows a man armed with a rifle, standing guard on the roof of a building. Behind him, you can see cargo containers that had been tossed around as if they were shoeboxes:
That’s el Universal of Caracas, Venezuela.
This photo by the AP’s Natacha Pisarenko of a Talcahuano street littered with debris, cars and a good-sized boat was used by a number of papers in the U.S., where an AP story that focused on the tsunami angle was a popular choice for A1 today.
Here is the Advocate of Baton Rouge, La., circulation 87,881…
…the Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, circulation 217,545…
…and the Times of Seattle, Wash., circulation 263,588:
As you can see, each of the three gave large, dramatic play to the picture.
I’m not quite sure where the picture on the front of the Jornal do Commercio of Recife, Brazil, was shot:
The caption says, according to Google Translate:
Drama: Still upside down, Chile seems far away to regain normalcy. When night falls, the hungry invade stores in search of food and water.
The picture is by Martin Bernetti of Agence France-Presse.
The Washington Post led page one today with a generous four-column photo of residents in Concepción pulling water from a drainage ditch. There is no drinkable water there, the caption says:
The photo is from Reuters. Average daily circulation for the Post is 582,844.
I pulled this next page specifically to show aid getting out. Slowly, but surely, it’s trickling into Chile. Unless I’m mistaken, this headline says Now, Yes:
The picture is neither captioned nor credited. Perú.21 is based in Lima, Peru.
But then I found this photo — obviously at the same time — on the front of the Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, Va., circulation 46,672:
Yet another picture by the AP’s Natacha Pisarenko, the caption says:
Residents reach to catch merchandise thrown from a market being looted in Concepcion, Chile, yesterday.
Sigh. Oh, well. Perhaps we’ll see pictures of relief efforts on the front of Wednesday’s papers.
At least someone in Chile received some help Monday. Here is today’s Gazette of Colorado Springs:
Isn’t that a great picture? Please click for a larger view:
It’s credited to only “AP.”
Average daily circulation for the Gazette is 93,859.