Making Hash of 9/11
I don’t think I have the stomach to process a lot of the news stories commemorating the fact that it’s been seven years since 9/11—too many of them will be too mawkish, too partisan, or just too much of a reminder of sad information I already know about. But somebody’s come up with a tribute I can get behind: Exploiting Twitter’s hash-tag functionality, Twemes is collecting folks’ Twitter posts of what they were doing when the terrorists attacks occurred. (via)
Me, I was living in San Francisco at the time—home to the Examiner, which produced the best page-one on the attacks, by a mile.
4 Responses to “Making Hash of 9/11”
Leave a Reply
Recent Posts
- Extended Drinking Hours at Inauguration: It’s Official (1
)
The vote is 9-4 in favor of extending hours of alcohol service at local taverns and nightclubs until… - Extended Inauguration Drinking Hours Not a Done Deal! (1)
DCist points to a load of confusion over the District's plans to extend drinking hours in the days l… - Sean Taylor’s Officially Fair Game (0)
On WTEM's "Monday Morning Quarterback" show yesterday, host Andy Pollin led a discussion of Sunday's… - AU Professor Proposes Using Complex Online Scheme to Make D.C. Simple to Understand (0)
Washington, D.C. is a complicated place. Journalists in D.C. bureaus are getting laid off in droves.… - Postcards From Home: Film and Paper Archive (0)
Medical Museum, 1993…
- Extended Drinking Hours at Inauguration: It’s Official (1
September 11th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
The link you want is this:
http://www.newseum.org/media/tfp_archive/2001-09-12/pdf/CA_SFE.pdf
Only a paper on the other side of the country could have put that out. Even the NY Post and Daily News were not that bad.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Yeah seriously, the Examiner’s 9/12 front page was laughably terrible. Even The Onion couldn’t have thought up something like that.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:04 am
This is asking for trouble, but: What’s wrong with it? It caught the eye, expressed a sentiment that everybody was feeling, and didn’t pretend to showcase news that everybody already knew. (Also, for context’s sake: The Ex, there as here, is a free daily tab that’s the city’s second read after the Chronicle. Its mandate to bring the news in the typical manner isn’t as strong. Playing the story like a traditional daily would’ve been a useless move on their part.)
September 12th, 2008 at 11:40 am
The Examiner was definitely right not not play the story straight, given its status in SF that you have just outlined. What I disagree with is that it expressed a sentiment that everybody was feeling. I’d venture to say that, less than 24 hours after the attacks, most people were still in a state of shock and had yet to reach the stage of grieving where anger towards the perpetrators had set in.
However, let’s say I’m wrong about that, which is entirely possible. Let’s say the first emotion on everyone’s minds after the planes hit the towers was anger. The Examiner still could have found a MUCH more sophisticated way to express and channel that anger than “Bastards!” In fact, I’d say that a room full of four-year-olds could have found a more sophisticated way to express their anger than “Bastards!”
If the Examiner had really wanted to take an alternative angle on the event, a totally wordless cover with just a photo would have been much more elegant and effective.