More Share Their Front Pages
Poynter
December 25, 2013
By Jeremy Barr
Some newspapers may be dying. But their front pages aren’t.
Newspaper covers are increasingly being shared digitally — helped along by the ease of posting on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.
But why? More than anything, these A1s are seen as an encapsulation of a historical event, to be seen and filed away for a distant time when we want to remember how much something mattered in its day.
Sharing a front on Twitter — or saving a digital copy as a PDF — is the modern-day equivalent of cutting out and saving a page from a significant edition, or just a funny New York tabloid front.
“Whatever the newspaper industry is struggling with today, there is a long history of front pages capturing history with a kind of permanence,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, in a phone interview.
Front pages provide a “sense of permanence in a broadcast culture where things disappear quickly,” he said.
