New York Times May 24 front page

From a journalism standpoint, I'd like to know what people think of the front page of The New York Times from May 24, listing the names of those who died in the U.S. from the coronavirus.

 

Terrific front page, and it only includes 1,000 names. Poignant. Respectfully. Telling.

I remember years ago a Boston Globe columnist did something in which he just listed all the people who had recently died due to gun violence. Made a stronger impact than anything he could have written.

 

Except one of the names is actually a murder victim, and another has an incorrect hometown -- which calls the accuracy of the entire project into question.

Also, the online version lists all the local papers from whose features The Times cribbed... but those aren't named accurately. There are quite a few given a "The" where it doesn't belong. (That seemed to be the default!) I'm hoping all the links are correct, but I also noticed they just go to the homepage -- not the individual memorial story.

 

I think it brings a physical presence to the abstract idea that 100,000 strangers have died.

 

Hot mess. Besides the accuracy questions raised above, its too gray, breaks most rules. Was clearly designed to win an award or win Twitter over serving a reader.

Then again those rules were designed to sell papers. No one buys papers anymore. Winning Twitter is the new way to create buzz over a good photo or layout that directs the eyes to various stories; so maybe those old rules don’t apply

 

Better than that blank sports front.

The space is used to tell a story.

They're both gimmicky, though.

 

Did you break your hip hiking up your leg to shit on a pretty poignant journalistic effort?

 

The Trump golfing replies all over social media fix the obvious design flaws, which W_n_lw_y doesn't care about.

 

I like the idea of the project, although I agree it's probably geared and meant more for the online editions of the paper. It is quite a journalistic effort.

In print, I'd rather have seen the names listed on an inside page, I think. Even a prominent one like, say, Page 3, might have been better, perhaps in reverse, with white print on a black background, or with a graphic of the coronavirus cells we've all become so familiar with in a faded gray behind the writing.

That said, I'm going to see if some relative of mine still living in New York could please mail a hard-copy edition to me. I'd love to see it first-hand. I think my impressions might be different.

 

I understand your points and kind of agree, graphically speaking. But basic newspaper arguments also could be made to counter those points, too. Specifically, that what readers really care most about is names, names, names.

Locally speaking, especially, that's what things like obituaries, nuptials, sports roundups, Little League and Girls' Softball capsules, and agate are all about, and why those things have always been so much a part of newspapers.

 

Another issue/danger I would be wary of in a project like this is, you'd hate to leave someone out of such a published list, if they should have been included. That seems bound to happen.

And if you do decide to have only some, as are on the front page of the NYT, how to choose who goes where in something of this scope and range.