COVID-19

New York Times fills Sunday front page with names of people who died from COVID-19

A woman looks at a computer screen
A woman looks at a computer screen with a tweet by the New York Times newspaper account, showing the early edition front page of Sunday's paper, with a list of names printed on it. Each name is a person lost to COVID-19 in the U.S.
Agustin Paullier | AFP via Getty Images

The New York Times has devoted Sunday’s entire front page to a long list of names of people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.

The names and brief descriptions culled from obituaries from around the country fill six columns under the headline “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss,” with a subheadline reading: “They Were Not Simply Names on a List. They Were Us.”

The all-text list takes the place of the usual articles, photographs and graphics in an effort to convey the vastness and variety of lives lost, according to Simone Landon, assistant editor of the graphics desk.

A tally kept by Johns Hopkins University says more than 96,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States.

Tom Bodkin, chief creative officer of the Times, said he did not remember any front pages without images, though there have been pages with only graphics, during his 40 years at the newspaper.