Ombud: Is Iraq Slowly Moving Off Front Pages?

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002651850

His newspaper gets hit from both sides, Timothy J. McNulty, public editor for the Chicago Tribune, relates in his most recent column. Some think the paper plays up "negative" stories about Iraq on page one, others feel the paper doesn't cover the war often enough.

Rather than ponder the usual partisan biases, McNulty took the rare step of actually counting how many stories about Iraq have been hitting the front page, at his paper and others.

"I thought we should examine some actual data about how many Iraq stories appear on the front page of this and other major American newspapers," McNulty wrote on Sunday. "What is immediately clear: a definite drop in the number of front-page articles as the war and occupation progressed during the last three years." It made him wonder about "Iraq fatigue."

In the first five months of this year, the Tribune placed Iraq on the front page 41 times in 151 days. But in the same period last year, there were 74 Iraq articles on Page 1, and 138 stories in 2004.