Every year since 2001 Americans have relived a mass tragedy. Is it time for the coverage – and conversation – to fade?
For 11 years, Americans have remembered the victims of the 9/11 attacks in a series of memorials and ceremonies whose rituals have become familiar.
But something seems to have changed this year.
Some news organizations are taking steps to scale down their coverage of the 9/11 anniversary.
"The pain, the outrage, the loss – these never fade. The amount of journalism, however, must," New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote in a Tuesday post about the paper's decision to bump a 9/11 anniversary mention from the front page. The Times wasn't the only paper to make the editorial call: the Wall Street Journal's only reference appeared as an ad, Poynter notes.
Memorials are simplifying, too: for the first time, no elected officials will speak at the New York site.
Still, conversations about 9/11 continue. People still take time to share where they were, how they felt, and what they remember most. But perhaps, like many other national tragedies – the civil war, JFK, Pearl Harbor – the memories will eventually become less fresh.
So, we're turning this discussion over to you. Is it time to stop revisiting 9/11? Should newspapers begin to shift their coverage? Or is it important for us to keep talking?
Take the poll or leave your answers in the comments below. Or use this open thread to tell us how your life has changed since 9/11.