McVeigh execution front pages focus on the victims

By Ellen Foley

The execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh June 11 sent editors scrambling for new ways to tell an old story. It also gave us another insight into the future of “breaking news.”

Times have changed since the last public hanging in Owensboro, Ky. in 1936.

Gone is the purple prose and the focus on the perpetrator.

In 2001, many newspapers focused on the victims of the bombing. The Des Moines (Iowa) Register, The Indianapolis Star and The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk received accolades for their innovative visual approaches, but other efforts were judged pedestrian. Dr. Ink prompted a debate on the alleged half-hearted approach by at least one paper. (See www.poynter.org/ offthenews/ 061701mcveigh.htm.)

As for the future of national breaking news stories, editors need only look to the Oklahoma media. The execution time of 7:14 a.m. was unfriendly to most morning news dailies. But it was a perfect fit for a website.

Oklahoma City’s Kelly Dyer, director of Interactive/Multimedia for The Daily Oklahoman, which includes www.oklahoman.com, reports the website logged a half million page views the day of the execution. This represents an increase of 225 percent over an average day’s traffic.

Dyer said with any spike of this sort, the website retains some new viewers. Oklahoman.com increased its page views 72 percent in 2000 over the previous year, she added.

Foley is managing editor of the Philadelphia Daily News.