'SF Chron' Is on Top of Crowd Counts

By: Ari Berman When it comes to technology, the Bay Area almost always stays a step ahead of the game. But even after the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that it had used aerial photography to count crowd size -- always a controversial subject -- at a Feb. 16 antiwar rally, it appears that aerial reconnaissance isn't likely to become common any time soon, with budgets as tight as they are.

But one paper considering flyovers of major demonstrations is The Washington Post. And, as Byron E. Calame, deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal, observed with a chuckle, "If you can prove police and organizers wrong, that's a pretty good find."

Most newspapers have long relied on police and organizer guesstimates. Usually, the organizers inflate the number while police deflate it. But who can say who's right? Such an imperfect system convinced the Chronicle staff to try something new, especially with the likelihood of more marches in the offing.

Responding to a reader's suggestion, the Chronicle hired a company specializing in taking photos for topographical maps. The Chronicle's results, which placed the Feb. 16 rally tally at 65,000 people, far lower than police and organizer estimates that ranged from 200,000 to 250,000, surprised nearly everyone, Chronicle staffers included. "I actually thought the number would be much higher," Managing Editor Robert J. Rosenthal told E&P. "We knew we'd be criticized no matter what, and felt helpless without our own measure. This is a very hot political issue, and we needed to provide accuracy."

Rosenthal said the experiment provided a good yardstick for the future, even though it came with a $4,000 price tag. Wildly divergent police and organizer estimates hamper coverage of demonstrations, he said. Others disagree, however. Referring to the large New York protests on Feb. 15, New York Daily News Editor in Chief Edward Kosner noted, "The police estimates said they were big, the organizers said they were bigger. There wasn't much of a controversy." Kosner said that only a long series of protests would make newspapers pay more attention to the specificity of crowd counts.

Relying on police and organizers, when their numbers drastically differ, seems ridiculous, said Gabriel Escobar, city editor at The Washington Post. Still, a number of obstacles to counting from overhead exist in the Washington area. To use aerial photography, the Post would have to ask the Federal Aviation Administration for an exemption to the 15-mile "no-fly" zone over the capital. Additionally, there are often plenty of tourists on the National Mall, where rallies are usually held. So, while pondering flyovers, the Post will continue to ask veterans of Washington demonstrations to compare crowd sizes.

Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, said the Chronicle's effort was a move in the right direction but lacked some specific steps -- for example, the photos should have been measured on an orthophoto map, which has the sharpest resolution. The Chronicle likely underestimated the crowd size, El-Baz said.

Still, several editors were impressed with the Chronicle's approach (which involves placing grids over the aerial photos). Charlotte H. Hall, a managing editor at Newsday in Melville, N.Y., said that if mass rallies continued, she would look into more precise methods of counting, even though "journalists aren't in the business of science."