Victim Profiles Strike Chord
By SETH SUTEL
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK - Their faces peering from newspaper pages are daily reminders of the human toll of an inhuman crime. Anecdotes from relatives and vacation snapshots tell of the simple pleasures and ambitions snuffed out on Sept. 11.
Since the terrorist attacks, several newspapers have been running profiles and photos of the more than 5,000 people believed killed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"The idea was to convey the scale of what happened but also the humanity," said Jonathan Landman, metro editor for The New York Times, which has been running profiles on a consistent basis since shortly after the attacks. "You can show the scale of it by giving it a full page in The New York Times, and you reflect the humanity of it by writing profiles of the individual people."
Many of the details are plain, but evocative. One man, a gregarious sales manager from a software company, never liked to talk about his own accomplishments. A frequent swimmer, his family found a third-place medal in the bottom of his gym bag. The family of an outdoorsman was pondering what kind of tree to plant in his memory.
How long the coverage can continue remains an open question _ eventually the papers will run out of people to profile and possibly families that can be reached and are willing to cooperate.
But in the meantime, the extensive coverage has struck a strong emotional chord with readers by honoring the lives of the ordinary people who died.
"Reading these portraits each day allows me in some way to honor those who are missing," Rhode Island resident Ilana Gareen said in letter to the Times thanking the paper for the profiles.
The New York Daily News has been running photos of people killed in the attacks, sometimes to illustrate stories and sometimes on their own. Daily News spokesman Ken Frydman said the paper has been encouraging readers to send in photos of family members believed killed in the attacks.
The New York Post has also had extensive coverage of people who died in the attacks, but mainly in longer feature stories and columns rather than short profiles.
Newsday, based in New York's Long Island, has also been running profiles. Long Island editor Ben Weller said the paper had been devoting about a half dozen reporters to the project, but he said much of the staff had also made contributions.
The paper had done similar coverage in profiling most of the 233 people killed in the TWA flight 800 crash in 1996, but he said this effort was extracting an emotional toll on the reporters involved, who speak on an almost daily basis with bereaved families.
"It's very hard on them," Weller said. "I think the thing that keeps them going is the positive response they've been getting. Families will call up out of the blue and say they're making a difference."
Newsday is assembling a public database of people missing in the disaster with other newspapers also owned by Tribune Co. "Our intention with the database is to do every single person," Weller said. "We're not sure we can sustain that with print, but we'd like to do everyone if we can."
The Chicago Tribune, which is also owned by Tribune Co., ran profiles nearly every day after the attacks but suspended the coverage after the U.S. military response began. Deputy metro editor Peter Kendall said the paper also got a tremendous response from readers, and it's currently looking at resuming the coverage.
"Some readers said they started reading those stories before they read anything else," Kendall said. "It reminded people of what this story was all about."
The Associated Press is also providing daily packages of short stories about victims of the terrorist attacks.
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