The United States has approached the milestone of 100.000 deaths caused due to coronavirus, the New York Times has paid tribute to them by filling the entire front page of Sunday’s paper with the death notices of victims from across the country.
In today’s front page of New York Times, it intended to convey the vastness and variety of the tragedy, the front page is a simple list of names and personal details taken from obituaries around the US.
The headline is “US deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss”, with a sub-heading that reads: “They were not simply names on a list. They were us.”
The front page of The New York Times for May 24, 2020 pic.twitter.com/Mp4figjnQe
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 23, 2020
The entire list, which continues inside, numbers nearly 1,000 names – a fraction of the total loss of life in the US during the outbreak so far.
The US death toll stands at more than 97,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, by far the highest in the world, and the Times said it had been considering how to mark expected milestone of 100,000 deaths.
the front page of sunday’s @nytimes. pic.twitter.com/L2xF8fPg4u
— Josh Crutchmer (@jcrutchmer) May 23, 2020
In an article for Times Insider, assistant graphics editor Simone Landon explained the treatment was a way of personalising the tragedy as readers and staff developed data fatigue from the constant reporting of the pandemic.
Landon led a team of researchers in searching obituaries in hundreds of US newspapers that listed Covid-19 as the cause of death and extracting names and key personal details “that depicted the uniqueness of each life lost”, such as: “Alan Lund, 81, Washington, conductor with ‘the most amazing ear”.
this is part of a project headed by @simonelandon and directed for print by @standardregular. cover by tom bodkin. 1000 obituaries pulled from the nearly 100,000 obituaries of americans dead from the coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/jNIeugcatG
— Josh Crutchmer (@jcrutchmer) May 23, 2020
The Times tweeted an image of the front page on Saturday afternoon and within hours had 61,000 retweets and more than 116,00 likes.
Monday in the US is Memorial Day, the traditional start of the American summer, and some experts fear that the return of warmer weather combined with a loosening of lockdowns around the country could trigger a deadly second wave of the coronavirus.
