Newpapers capture the election results...

There's a great site, Newseum "the interactive museum of news," where you can access newspaper covers from 66 countries: 730 newspapers.

Go here for the covers from 5 November 2008.

I'll be posting a few samples over the next few days from various locales:

Oakland Tribune, Oakland California (where Proposition 8 banning gay marriage unfortunately passed) tooting "A New Era"




The Times, Johannesburg, South Africa

La Presse, Montreal, Canada














An-Nahar, Beirut, Lebanon
(Unfortunately, I can't read Arabic.)







The Gray Lady herself, The New York Times, proclaiming "racial barrier falls." They aren't the only one to advance this notion in their election results reportage. I mysefl wonder what journalists mean by this declaration?

'Now it's official, a black man can be elected to the highest office in the nation'? Hmm, well, when Harold Washington assumed the post we found 'a black man could become Mayor of Chicago.' But it's worth noting that history hasn't yet repeated itself in Chicago. Yes, a particular and singular black man can be elected to an office that previously excluded all black men--and black women for that matter--in a particular and singular moment in history. I think for a racial barrier to have truly fallen the result cannot be summed via a single, albeit mind-blowingly historic, victory. Black male and female elected officials would have to be serving in greater numbers as governers and congress-persons, really all through government. And they'd have to be allowed the priviledge of being as mediocre and ineffectual as some of their white counterparts, and for the same mundane reasons as their white counterparts OR of being as or more exceptionally skilled as their white counterparts without white people calling them arrogant, or making surprised statements as to the quality of their elocution and/or hygiene. Most importantly they wouldn't have to carry the almost unimaginable weight of being the first, this late in the game. But for the failure of the United States to follow through on the Reconstruction of the country, during and after the Civil War, it is entirely possible that neither President-Elect Obama nor Mayor Washington would have been "firsts." What a nation that might have been.


The Huntsville Times, Huntsville, Alabama. Interesting how the paper's photo choices foregrounds both the Obama family dynamic, and the obviously deep bond between wife and husband.







Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois both choose variations on an iconic presidential /statesman image.



















There were plenty of headlines shouting, "Yes He Did!" and variations on "Change Has Come." But one of my personal favorites comes from the Sioux City Journal, in Sioux City Iowa. It's direct and to the point: BELIEVE IT.