By: Joe Strupp
Newsday of Melville, N.Y., plans to put out a 24-page extra edition Monday afternoon to cover the crash of an American Airlines plane near Kennedy Airport in Queens, N.Y.
Publisher Ray Jansen told
E&P the decision to publish about 30,000 copies of the special edition was not difficult. "It came down in the middle of our circulation area," Jansen said of American Flight 587, which crashed in the residential Rockaway Beach neighborhood of Queens minutes after takeoff Monday morning.
He also said the timing of the tragedy, just two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, prompted the decision.
"That plays into it a lot," Jansen said. "We think people are more sensitive to something like this. We feel we have to tell them as much as we can."
Jansen would not estimate the extra cost of the special edition, but said the brunt would be in overtime and newsprint. He said the majority of extra copies would be sold in Queens through hawkers and regular single-copy locations.
As of noon today, New York City's three other daily newspapers,
The New York Times,
Daily News, and
New York Post, had announced no plans for extra or special editions.
All three newspapers were covering the event on their Web sites, but
Newsday's site went down around noon because of excessive demand, according to Dennis Elder, Web site editor. The site was expected to be up again by 1 p.m.
Newsday and the
New York Post each published extra editions on Sept. 11.
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