FASPE: Structuring Page One - How newspapers prioritize disaster events in the digital age

Written for the 2013 Journalism program with the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics.

On April 15 the Associated Press predicted participants in the 117th Boston Marathon would have the “perfect running weather” – cloudy and somewhere in the mid-50s – by the time most of them reached the finish line. The race began at 9 a.m. That afternoon, news media all over the country were scrambling to report on the deadly explosions near the end of the Marathon route at Copley Square. Most of the 23,000 marathon participants had already crossed the finish line before two bombs went off within seconds of each other just before 3 p.m. But thousands were still running and sideline supporters were waiting for them at the finish line. After the smoke cleared, three people were dead and more than 200 injured.

Two days later and almost 2,000 miles away, massive amounts of ammonium nitrate in a fertilizer plant in West, Texas caught fire and exploded into a confusion of smoke and flame. At least 15 people were killed and more than 180 people were injured from the evening explosion. Almost 80 homes and businesses, including a nearby apartment complex, a middle school and a nursing home were severely damaged. About half the town of West was evacuated.

Both tragic events involved immediate, up-to-the-minute breaking news reporting. Both required days of clean up and weeks of investigation into the people and science behind the explosions. With very little time and planning, editors at various media outlets had to judge, among other things, what the stories were, how much coverage each disaster and its aftermath would get each day, the number of words per story and where the stories would run. Would a story make it to the front page of the paper or the home page of the website?

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