PUTTING MEMORY IN ITS PLACE

Abstract

The September 11 attacks took place in three distinct locations, yet even more than a decade later, their anniversary is covered far more widely. Studies of anniversary journalism have yet to closely examine the role of place, so this research was built on the question of how the locations of the attacks and their memorials have been visually presented in the news media. Drawing on the concepts of place and collective memory, content analysis was used to investigate anniversary photo usage in each of the major newspapers most proximate to each site—the New York Times, Washington Post, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette—as well as a non-proximate publication, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The results suggest that newspapers memorialized what happened in “our” place above those of others, even in the absence of geographic ties to the event. This produced two strains of the 9/11 narrative: one in which the physical settings of the attacks were central, and one in which they were peripheral. The implication is that the significance of place may be malleable in anniversary journalism, subordinated to the demands of collective memory.

Keywords:

• anniversary journalism
• collective memory
• newspaper photography place
• ritual communication
• September 11 attacks