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Banner Headlines for Tumultuous Times
For this newspaper, the extraordinary events of the past few months have demanded headlines that take up space.
Jacey Fortin, Judith Levitt and
Every once in a while, a news headline calls out for big, bold font.
This winter, those headlines kept coming. The news since Election Day has been dominated by the chaos of the presidential transition and the persistence of a devastating pandemic.
There were vaccine rollouts, economic crises, political battles, evictions, reckonings with racism and congressional elections that made history. Within a single month, the U.S. Capitol building was both overrun by a violent mob and adorned with giant flags for a presidential inauguration.
How do you mark the most significant events when the news is so relentlessly remarkable? At The New York Times, one way is to make the headlines very large.
A banner headline is typically one that stretches across a newspaper’s front page or website. It uses jumbo letters and bold type to convey the magnitude of a news item, pushing other articles out of its way.
There have been a lot of banner headlines on the front pages of The Times this winter — far more than usual, according to Tom Jolly, the newspaper’s print editor.
“It’s remarkable,” he said. “It’s definitely a reflection of our world, and all the major news events that have made 2020 so memorable — and are making 2021 memorable, too.”
Here are some of the big ones.
On Election Day, the front page of the print newspaper reflected the angst of a nation that knew, even before polling places were closed, that it probably had a fraught few days — or weeks — of vote-counting ahead.
When former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took the lead in Pennsylvania, the fog of a too-close-to-call election began to lift. He seemed confident about his chances, but President Trump was spreading false claims of rampant voter fraud.
Four days after Election Day, The Times called the race. Mr. Biden won, having fulfilled a decades-long ambition in his third bid for the White House. His running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, was the first woman to become vice-president elect.
After Mr. Trump falsely claimed that widespread voter fraud had stolen victory from him, The Times called election officials in every state. They said that there were no irregularities that had affected the outcome of the election.
Mr. Trump fought the results of the election in a state-by-state litigation campaign. When the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from Texas in December, it was a decisive blow to the president and his allies.
The United States began an enormous coronavirus vaccine rollout in December, and health care workers were among the first to get the shots. They came just as the nation surpassed 300,000 coronavirus deaths, a toll larger than any other country’s.
In January, an audio recording of a telephone call revealed that Mr. Trump had pressured the top elections official in Georgia to “find” votes that would help the president win the state.
On Jan. 6, there was violence in Washington. A mob of Trump loyalists stormed and occupied the Capitol on the day Congress had convened to certify Mr. Biden’s victory. The invasion, which left five people dead, had no parallel in modern American history.
Two days after the siege by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Democrats laid the groundwork to impeach the president for the second time. It was an all-out effort by furious Democrats, backed by a handful of Republicans, to pressure Mr. Trump to leave office in disgrace.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump became the first American president to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans joined with Democrats in the House to charge him with “incitement of insurrection.”
The single word topping the print newspaper on Jan. 14 — “Impeached” — was discussed by several top Times editors in conversations that went late into the night, Mr. Jolly said.
On Jan. 20, Mr. Biden’s presidency began. In his Inaugural Address at the Capitol building, which had been stormed by supporters of his predecessor just two weeks earlier, he called democracy “precious” and “fragile.” Then, he added: “Democracy has prevailed.” Those three words became a top headline on the website on Wednesday and stretched across the front of the print newspaper the next morning.
Our Coverage of the Capitol Riot and its Fallout
The Events on Jan. 6
Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump raided the U.S. Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.
A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a New York Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.
Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.
Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, Jan. 6 wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.
The Federal Case Against Trump
The Indictment: Trump was indicted on Aug. 1 after a sprawling federal investigation into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election. Here is how the indictment was structured.
Trump’s Immunity Claim: The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. The justices scheduled arguments for the week of April 22.
The Trial: In February, the federal judge in the case decided to delay the trial, which was set to start on March 4. In doing so, she acknowledged that time had run out to get the proceeding going, mostly because of the wrangling over Trump’s immunity claim.
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