What’s the sense of putting out a newspaper Extra in this day of round-the-clock electronic coverage?
Newspapers around the world struggled with this question today.
Clearly, putting out an extra in 2001 is not about breaking news. Television did that better than other media could hope to, of course. And offices and stores that didn’t have TVs on today had the radio going. For people in search of news, it was an electronic day.
But a number of newspapers produced meaningful extra editions. Look at the Detroit Free Press, the Virginian-Pilot, the St. Petersburg Times and other papers, and you see what the print medium still does dramatically in a day designed for more dynamic media.
Print freezes a moment in time; it attaches a few well-chosen words to it; it defines it, informationally and emotionally. It is an organized, finite, community response. In that sense, a newspaper extra may be more art than information, more essay than report. Television does the play-by-play; newspapers step back and sum it up.
Several papers took a sort of poster approach to their front pages, bringing to mind Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment.” Yes, there are standard news accounts inside these extra editions, but the covers are the sort you’d frame to look back on when the news dies down.
We may not always capitalize on the strengths of the different media. But these are the days when we test them.
