U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss was the front-page article of The New York Times on May 24, 2020; the Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend. Its subheader read "They were not simply names on a list. They were us." It contained one thousand obituaries of individuals from across the United States who had died from COVID-19 during the pandemic, as the U.S. death toll reached 100,000.
Background
The article was intended to convey the vastness and variety of the tragedies resulting from the pandemic by personalizing them, countering data fatigue from constant reporting on the pandemic. Assistant graphics editor Simone Landon lead a team of researchers in searching obituaries that listed COVID-19 as the cause of death and extracting names and key personal details.[1]
The list was assembled by researcher Alain Delaquérière through various online sources for obituaries and death notices. A team of editors read them and gleaned phrases that depicted the uniqueness of each life lost.[2] Clinton Cargill, assistant editor on the National desk, co-directed the editing process with Landon. Other key figures include Matt Ruby, deputy editor of Digital News Design; Annie Daniel, a software engineer; and the graphics editors Jonathan Huang, Richard Harris and Lazaro Gamio. Andrew Sondern, an art director, did the print design.[3]
Reception
An image of the front page was tweeted by the Times the Saturday before publication; it had 61,000 retweets and more than 116,000 likes within hours.[1] This tweet was later deleted and replaced with an image of the late edition after one obituary was linked to a homicide victim.[4] Many noted that the front page resembled those of newspapers in the late 1800s or early 1900s due to its lack of large headers or photos.[5]
Its publication was followed by the first week of the George Floyd protests. This inspired the art director Adrianne Benzion and freelance copywriter Jessica McEwan duplicated the cover with 350 names of Black individuals who died following an interaction with the police since 2000. Instead of a short eulogy the status of the victims’ case is stated, a large share of which reads “pending investigation.”[13]
The cover design was ranked 19th in Ad Age's "30 Best Creative Brand Moves of 2020".[14]
Legacy
As the death toll continued the mount, the status of 100,000 deaths as being incalculable was referenced by journalists in order to express how hard a multitude of that figure was to put into frame[15][16] or how callous later headlines by the Times were in comparison.[17]
Notable deaths
Among the obituaries there were a number of notable deaths:
^Mack, David (December 21, 2021). "800,000 Americans Have Now Died From COVID. It Didn't Have To Be This Way". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved March 30, 2022. When newspaper front pages declared 100,000 dead was an "incalculable loss," what words did you imagine, if any, they might find to describe a figure eight times that?
^Yong, Ed (March 8, 2022). "How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal?". The Atlantic. Retrieved March 30, 2022. Now the nation hurtles toward a milestone of 1 million. What is 10 times incalculable?
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