According to the Times, Simone Landon, assistant editor of the Graphics desk, wanted a visual representation "that conveyed both the vastness and variety of lives lost," arriving at the conclusion that what they did would be the best sort of portrayal to accomplish just that.“Both among ourselves and perhaps in the general reading public, there’s a little bit of a fatigue with the data. We knew we were approaching this milestone,” Landon said, according to the Times. “We knew that there should be some way to try to reckon with that number.”Landon played around with the idea of depicting the lives lost with stick figures as well as dots, but noted that it “doesn’t really tell you very much about who these people were, the lives that they lived, what it means for us as a country."Researcher Alain Delaquérière compiled the list by combing through various sources online, collating deaths that were directly attributed to COVID-19 along with a team of editors and three graduate student journalists, who "read them and gleaned phrases that depicted the uniqueness of each life lost" to create the published list.“I wanted something that people would look back on in 100 years to understand the toll of what we’re living through,” said Marc Lacey, national editor of the Times, who noted to Tom Bodkin, the paper's chief creative officer, that the million-casualty "milestone" was quickly approaching.The Times team debated between two concepts to use in Sunday's paper: one was the obituary format that ended up being selected for the front page of the May 24 issue, the other was a grid of pictures representing hundreds of those who lost their lives.The most important factor was that the final product had to "take over the entire page," the Times said. The design itself mimics those of "centuries-old newspapers," without headlines - something that heavily interests Bodkin, who figured the tone would suit this project well.As of press time, the United States has reported 1.66 million cases of the coronavirus, and registered 97,426 deaths as a direct result of the viral spread.The front page of The New York Times for May 24, 2020 pic.twitter.com/d14JhFp4CP
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 24, 2020
'New York Times' prints grim front page listing US lives lost to COVID-19
The list details the names of each of the selected coronavirus casualties, followed by their name and one sentence describing the uniqueness of the life of the deceased
