How many Africans have to die for the story to go on Page 1?
James Warren, the Tribune’s deputy managing editor/features, raised that provocative question last week, after a news meeting in which he argued, alone and unsuccessfully, to put the story of mass deaths during flight from exploding military munitions in Lagos, Nigeria, on Page 1 of the Jan. 29 newspaper.
We routinely put stories about the Middle East on Page 1 if just one person is killed, Warren noted. In Nigeria, there already were at least 200 confirmed dead amid estimates that the death toll could exceed 1,000, as it ultimately did.
(As if to underscore Warren’s point, on that very day, Monday, Jan. 28, the Tribune had a Page 1 story with the headline, “Woman bomber kills 2 in Jerusalem.” One of the two was herself.)
I had not joined Warren in arguing in the news meeting for Page 1 treatment of the Nigeria story. And if I had it to do over again, I still would not argue for it for reasons I will explain later.
But he made an extremely important point and did the newspaper and our readers an enormous service by raising it.
Page 1 is, without question, the most important space in the newspaper. It’s the face that the paper shows to the public, the place where we make our first impression. From an editorial perspective, it’s where the editors display what they consider the best work of their staffs and the most important stories of the day.
Page 1 is limited. Most days, no more than six stories go on it, along with pictures and what are known in the trade as “refers,” small headlines that direct readers to interesting or important material inside.
On Tuesday, Jan. 29, the Nigeria story was not a Page 1 story but it did get a refer: “Disaster in Nigeria: Hundreds die fleeing arms depot blasts. Page 3.”
Inside, the text of the story by Associated Press correspondent Glenn McKenzie framed a powerful photo of a woman, a mother, clutching at the body of a small boy, her son, which rests atop the shoulder of a man. The caption said what the photo indicated the mother had not yet accepted: The child was dead.
So what stories were deemed more worthy of Page 1 on Jan. 29 than the Lagos disaster? As it happens, that was one of the rare days when there were seven. They included:
– President Bush’s refusal to turn over to the General Accounting Office documents on his energy task force, setting up a constitutional test over separation of powers.
– DuPage County State’s Atty. Joe Birkett’s decision not to seek the death penalty for Marilyn Lemak.
– The indictment of politically connected Chicago insurance executive Michael Segal on insurance and mail fraud charges.
– President Bush’s pledge of a “lasting partnership” to visiting Afghan leader Hamid Karzai.
– The Bush administration’s announcement that Illinois would be a test site for an expanded prescription drug benefit for senior citizens.
– Gov. George Ryan’s reversal of his decision to close the Illinois Center for Rehabilitation and Education, after a Tribune story two days earlier about the effects it would have on students there.
– University of Chicago political scientist Michael Dawson’s decision to leave Hyde Park for Harvard, making our premier local institution a net loser in the escalating competition for black academic stars.
What all of these stories, with the exception of the last, have in common is that they in some way and to some degree implicate the reader as citizen. Each involves an action or decision by a public official that readers need to know about to properly discharge their duties as citizens.
The same holds true in stories about the Middle East, where America’s deep and controversial involvement over the years means that any action by any significant actor there can have effects here. (Sept. 11 was one such effect.)
The same held true during the revolution in Congo (formerly Zaire), where our government’s decades-long embrace of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko implicated the U.S. in the oppression he nurtured.
The same should have held true in Rwanda, where America’s position as the world’s leading nation created a moral obligation to act to prevent the genocide that occurred there.
The citizenship criterion cannot be the sole consideration in deciding what goes on Page 1 of the newspaper. There has to be room for humor, for pathos, for just plain good storytelling. But as the raison d’etre of the 1st Amendment, effective citizenship must always be first on the list of considerations.
On a slower news day, the Nigeria disaster would have been on Page 1–and would have deserved to be.
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E-mail: dwycliff@tribune.com
