Flight 587 Crash in Queens
By Helen Torres

I have decided to follow the stories on the tragedy of November 12th, when 265 people lost their lives in a devastating plane crash. This hit close to home as
I am of Dominican Decent and the plane was headed for Santo Domingo. I think
that this story will last two weeks because of its magnitude, and amount of loss
dead. Not only that, but where it crashed was a neighborhood of Cops and
firefighters and I think that this will make the story even more drawn out.

November 13
Print Article Title: 'Search for cause of Rockaways Disaster'
Print Article Author: 'Maki Becker and Corky Siemazno
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title: 265 Die in N.Y. Jet Crash; Mechanical Fault Probed
Web Article Author: JOSH GETLIN and GERALDINE BAUM
Web Page Link

The tragedy that occurred yesterday was very sad indeed. I must say that one of the advantages of reading the news online is that one can make use of sidebars and other navigator tools. However, maybe its because I chose an online source that was from the other coast, the news article in the L.A. Times doesn't use any sidebars. The navbar just takes the reader to other sections of the paper, which won't talk anymore about the crash. The Daily News, on the other hand, had a 32-page spread dedicated solely to the crash, featuring stories about people who were in the plane, and talking about the communities that were affected. Online it didn't even feel like the author cared about the tragedy but just reported it. The article in the newspaper did not only present all the facts, but also gave a touch of humanity to the tragedy using the printed word and I really didn't feel that from the online article.

November 14
Print Article Title: 'Doomed Jet's Pilot Heard Plane Rattle'
Print Article Author: Pete Donahue and Cory Siemazno with Celeste Katz and Joyce
Shelby
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title: Airliner's death rattle led to a desperate struggle for control, black box reveals
Web Article Author: Mark Riley
Web Page Link: http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/15/world/world12.html

Well the Daily News did not have an entire32 page spread, but it did have a good 3 features connected to the tragedy, including speaking to a family member of the victim and talking to people in the Dominican Republic. The Sydney article is a well-written and well-reported article. In terms of the information I gained from this article and the print article of the Daily News it was relatively the same, with similar quotes and everything. However, the Daily News has the features and other connecting stories right below and next to this story. In news writing I am very much about the human aspect of things.
Newspapers do this with features, and I think that online articles can do the same things. Just because a publication is online does not mean it only has to report. And if a publication online does have a feature it has to be sure to link it up from its 'hard news' version of this article.

November 15
Print Article Title: 'Wake from departing 747 may have turn tail apart'
Print Article Author: Pete Donohue, Warren Woodberry Jr., and Corky Siemaszko
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title: Inquiry into crash focuses on turbulence
Web Article Author: Glen Johnson
Web Page Link.


The Boston Globe article made mention of Megadata's Passur System, which showed the flight path of the doomed flight. I think that this was a very good addition to the piece and was something that I did not see in the Daily News. Also what I found interesting is that the story of Flight 587 is not on the front page, or event the 2nd and 3rd page. Its starting to lose importance it seems. I don't think however that the story will completely die out, at least not for another three weeks at the least. There are a huge amount of features that can me gleaned from this horrible tragedy. In this case I like being able to go online to get my news instead of the Daily News. I use yahoo, and yahoo list all the news stories from various news sources on one news topic, such as Flight 587. This concentrate of stories from different sources allows me to pick and choose, as well as examine the story from different angle. Now that the Daily News is dedicating less space to the story the Internet is giving me more information than the Daily News.

November 16
Print Article Title: 'Horrifying moment before fatal plunge'
Print Article Author: Pete Donohue, Corky Siemaszko, and Russ Burret
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title: Crashed plane 'hit turbulence twice'
Web Article Author: BBC News
Web Page Link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1658000/1658944.stm

I am quite please with the way England handles its online news coverage. There is a small box on the page where this articles is found that takes its readers to an interactive timeline of the events leading up to the crash. Also it has on the right navbar a bar a link up to past articles written in the past by BBC News about the Crash. As for my reaction to the actual articles both describe the last moments on the plane which were horrible for the passengers. Both speak about the shaking of the plane after the pilots lost control. What really scares me is how cleanly and almost perfectly that the tail fin was cut off the plane. The one thing that does alarm me is that I am noticing the print Newspaper is covering less and less of the tragedy. Features are getting less, art is getting smaller, and it is being put more and more inside the paper. The war and what happen on 9-11 it seems has had a long-standing effect on how the news perceives its own news.

November 17
Print Article Title: Disaster probe closes in on tail of doomed plane: Eye
witness videos of Airbus'
Print Article Author: Pete, Warren, and Brian Kates
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title: Break-up of airliner is captured on security film
Web Article Author: Charles Laurence
Web Page Link

Again here I am very pleased with the way the English online press is covering this story and the way that the news sites are set up. On the right navigation bar immediate are related stories, and external links. On the bottom after the article there are all the articles that have been written by the publication prior to this one, and on the bottom of that it has the article of the one that preceded this one. Wonderful use of links and sources I was quite please. As for the Daily news, it reported very well, and some great art actually for this article, though I must say I did not see the plane well in the still picture of the security camera. New information that I gleaned I gleaned from both articles. Both were able to tell me about the disappearing of the plane on the screen and then the white line of explosion. In this case I really didn't see a different, because the Daily News moved the story up and it was not that far from the front page, which is great because I truly feared that this story would be drowned out by events that preceded it.

November 18
Print Article Title: Air Crash Investigators Focus on Carbon Fiber
Composites in Flight 587's Tail Fin May Hold Key to Finding Cause of New York
Plane Disaster
Print Article Author: Guy Gugliotta
Web Article Title: Prayer Service Unites Communities
Web Article Author: VERENA DOBNIK
Web Page Link


Well I am not really happy because this Sunday I opened the Daily News and there were no articles on the crash. Not a feature not a nothing. So I had to go to the library and look at other newspapers, looking for an article on this crash. I found one in the Washing Post, which I think is a great paper. However, I think it is sad that the hometown papers this Sunday really did not focus on the crash at all. I am hoping that this is because tomorrow there will be an article talking about the prayer service that took place in rockaway for the victims in the two neighborhoods. In truth that is one of the advantages of online, because when I looked in yahoo I also so my hard print article as a title, and there was only one other article with it the one done by the AP about the service that took place in rockaway. It was done today, it was updated today, and that is the true advantage of online. It stays current, and print newspapers will not be printing this story until tomorrow.

November 19
Print Article Title: Coming Together In Grief & Prayer Service for Belle Harbor,
Washington Heights survivors
Print Article Author: Reported by: Lisa L. Colangelo, Greg Gittrich, Tamer El-Ghobashy, Jose Martinez, and Scott Shifrel. Written by: Corky Siemaszko.
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title: Communities Grieve for Crash Victims
Web Article Author: VERENA DOBNIK
Web Page Link

I also would like to refer to yesterday's weblog. The AP also did this story yesterday, of course here it is a bit more colorful, its less reporting a bit more heart. It's a rehash of the day before for the AP, but it keeps up with its print colleagues. As for the print article the art again was very good. very stunning I like that it took up the entire broad sheet. I was also curious as I read how many people reported on the event. If you look at the article its kind of in sections, so I wonder if each section was written by like one of them and that Siemaszko put it together. It was very well reported, and I must say that the Daily News Article contained more information, more personal stories, and just a better reporting quality overall over the very short AP piece that had not the best art.

November 20
Print Article Title:
Print Article Author:
Web Article Title: American Finds No Problems in Checks
Web Article Author: John Crawley
Web Page Link

I am not happy at all. Today there were only four articles that were in the yahoo news section about the crash. I mean it was only 8 days ago. I mean this Reuters article basically is telling us that the composite of the tail fin is being investigated and that they think that is the source of the crash. It is just leaving us to wonder if this was a freak accident, or if there is something in the fins designed that allowed it to be taken of the plane with the force of the turbulence. I am angered however that the Daily News did not cover this story today. It is the New York Hometown paper, why does the L.A. Times have an article on it but not the Daily News. Granted that the L.A. Time article that I am speaking of is online, but I am going to assume that it ran in the paper also. Even if it didn't. the daily news online version does not cover the story either, and I think that is a shame. I have been seeing this in the last couple of days, but I wanted to deny it. But there is no denying that the World Trade Center collapses really did overshadow the news to such a point that the war that was a result, and the families still burying and mourning are still newsworthy stores. I am not saying to stop covering the WTC and such, please continue especially when our soldiers are there, but we can't ignore local news. If 9-11 had never happen, do we truly believe that this story would have been left forgot to and not written about only 8 days after the occurrence. No, especially when its calling into question, the security of old planes, planes that are still n use.

November 21
Print Article Title: Flight Lasted 103 Seconds
Print Article Author: Pete Donohue
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title:
Web Article Author:
Web Page Link:

Well maybe the post heard my cries of injustice, but then the web decided that it should following the footsteps of the Daily News. The Article I quote above was little more than a blurb, kind of an update of what has been found out, but at least there were two other feature articles, one that written in the Dominican Republic, about how families are coping with the tragedy and loss of loved one. How town grieves, and how memorials and burials are taking place. The Web today was not nice to me. Failing to see anything on yahoo. I went to Cnn.com, and again saw nothing there either. I then went to msnbc.com. Even if perhaps some smaller news content site is talking about this story today, it's sad that the major ones are not. I am seeing that this story seems to be dying.
I am really not pleased because I think that this is from a post-9/11 world. And that really scares me because I don't want that every tragedy that happens to be overshadowed. I mean there will never be another tragedy, I pray, that will shadow this one, but still 265 people, including the five that lost their lives on the ground, died in the crash. And I think we owe it more to them than to give this story a 9 day shelf life.

November 22
Print Article Title:
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Its thanksgiving, maybe that is why the story is not getting covered today. That has to be it. I will say okay maybe it is a depressing story for this holiday season. We want things that will make us happy, like recipes, and the talk about a recovering economy in the coming Christmas rush. We want to think about cornbread, and turkey. I can live with that. But I hope that we are not taking a holiday weekend break away from the news at hand. If I don't see anything tomorrow I will be very upset with the media in this city, because I understand it might not be national but the story is definitely local.

November 23
Print Article Title: Shattered Family Unites to keep 30-yr. Tradition Alive
Print Article Author: TAMER EL-GHOBASHY
Print Article Publication: Daily News
Web Article Title:
Web Article Author:
Web Page Link:

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in giving the Daily News a hard time about not running this story on one of its Sunday editions and on Thanksgiving. Again the web I feel is not covering this story sufficiently. I think the problem is that the story has gone beyond just regular hard news reporting. I mean for now until investigators come up with something new, the only stories to be gleaned from this are stories that are features. Feature stories are not something that I feel online publications really strive for. The news one anyway. It's more the magazine type online sites that go for feature articles. The news is just the
news for the online site. And in this case I think it hurts the public good in the sense that there are so many way to utilize online resources that it is a shame to only have article written in hard news manner.

November 24
Print Article Title:
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TOTAL HELLO does anyone but me care that there really doesn't seem to be any attention put on this anymore. Again I really think that this is a horrible thing that the problem that I am seeing is that the news is not sure how much to time to spend on others things, but how can we really think that the War is the end all of do all? It's one thing to downplay a story, its another to ignore the darn thing. I mean I just don't understand, this story is newsworthy, I want to hear about it, I want to know more. It has not been reported to its full capability. This makes me soooooo MAD! If I don't see anything tomorrow I swear my view of the media will be so bad!!!!

November 25
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All right I am just basically disgusted today, goodbye!

November 26
Print Article Title:
Print Article Author:
Web Article Title: Bloomberg Visits Dominican Republic
Web Article Author: IAN JAMES
Web Page Link


Hooray, the story is not dead, it just needed a little bit of kick to get it going again. Well Bloombergs visit to the Dominican Republic I am sure will be covered by the Daily News in tomorrows issue. This is a mayoral candidate and this is a news worthy, and timely thing. However, it seems to me that sadly this story has come to its closure. I did not truly believe that I would be struggling to find articles by the end of my two-week span of time of studying the news. That is the reason I picked this story. usually plane crashes take a while to get out of the news, I mean it take at least a good month. But again I think this is post-9/11 world and it seems that the rules have changed. What people want to read about has change. I mean there have been other events that have happened, a young boy was killed on thanksgiving, and another columbine plot has been uncovered. But even these stories it seem take a back burner to Osmen-Bin-Laden and the war with the Taliban.

November 27
Print Article Title:
Print Article Author:
Web Article Title: Bloomberg, in Dominican Republic, Meets With
Crash Victims' Relatives
Web Article Author: JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Web Page Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/nyregion/27BLOO.html

Okay now I am happy. Its indirect because it's really about the new mayor, but the new mayor is paying attention to this problem. This makes me more than happy. I can see in his case that the Internet was faster than the newspaper. Yesterday, as soon as it happened, the Internet it was out on the yahoo news wire. The article I got today was not off the AP wire, like yesterday. Yahoo took me to the New York Times article page. Web online for New York time, I find to be different, than print for the New York Times. I am sure they had a similar story but I think some of the words were changed. I find that the New York times is very conscious of their audience and makes their words more concise perhaps is the best word for what they do.

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