CNN reports that Winona Ryder “may have stole just for the thrill of it”…

Newspaper front pages and headlines from across America on Wednesday, November 6, 2002…

Boston Globe: Romney sails to victory (JPEG, 209 KB)

Hartford Courant: ROWLAND WINS A 3RD; CONGRESS UNCERTAIN (PDF, 176 KB) or (JPEG, 122 KB)

New York Times: G.O.P. COLLECTS KEY GAINS NATIONWIDE; PATAKI, JEB BUSH, ELIZABETH DOLE WIN; LAUTENBERG IN; SENATE OUTCOME CLOSE (JPEG, 88 KB)

New York Post: GEORGE III: Pataki wins landslide third term (JPEG, 48 KB)

Newark Star-Ledger: LAUTENBERG WINS THE DAY (JPEG, 126 KB)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Randell Rules (JPEG, 151 KB)

Baltimore Sun: EHRLICH WINS: 1st GOP governor since ‘66; Smith wins in Balto. Co. (JPEG, 140 KB)

Washington Post: GOP Controls Both Houses // Ehrlich Stuns Townsend for Governor (JPEG, 71 KB)

Miami Herald: A SMOOTH VOTE FOR BUSH: GOVERNOR EASILY BEATS MCBRIDE (JPEG, 103 KB)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Republicans roll (JPEG, 63 KB)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Taft, GOP sweep: Governor, party grab control of statewide offices(JPEG, 128 KB)

Detroit Free Press: SHE’S THE BOSS: GRANHOLM WINS A PLACE IN HISTORY (JPEG, 135 KB)

Detroit News: Granholm triumphs, pledges to unify state (JPEG, 63 KB)

Chicago Tribune: Illinois Democrats romp / GOP seizes U.S. Senate, holds House (JPEG, 158 KB)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Talent wins nail-biter: GOP CAPTURES U.S. SENATE, HOLDS ON TO HOUSE / MISSOURI HOUSE ALSO GOES TO REPUBLICANS (PDF, 152 KB) or (JPEG, 147 KB)

Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Republicans add Senate control // Polls close late; chaos carries Pulaski county // Pryor follows dad to U.S. Senate win (JPEG, 173 KB)

Arizona Republic: A CLIFFHANGER: Napolitano, Salmon in mighty duel (JPEG, 147 KB)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Republicans win control of Senate // DAVIS RE-ELECTED (JPEG, 113 KB)

Please note: I am posting these newspaper front pages here for informational and archival purposes only; no commercial or copyright-infringing use is intended. If you are the copyright owner of an image displayed here and you would like to have the image removed, please e-mail me and let me know, and I will comply with your request. Thanks!

UPDATE, 5:03 AM: I just found a site with a bunch more front pages. I’ve downloaded Wednesday’s (they’ll disappear soon, to be replaced by Thursday’s), and will upload them ASAP.

UPDATE, 11/8/02, 2:14 AM: I now have more than 100 U.S. newspaper front pages, plus the front pages of 10 foreign newspapers, from Nov. 6-7 online. Just click here to start checking out the galleries.

But enough about the silly election stuff! You’re probably wondering about the coverage of the week’s really big story, the Winona Ryder guilty verdict! Well, here’s what the New York tabloids had to say:
 

Here’s what the front pages of three Australian newspapers front pages looked like this morning:

For a larger JPEG of the Sydney Morning Herald front page, click here.
For a really detailed view — a PDF file — of the Herald, click here.
To view today’s New York Times front page, click here.

Among other things, the dreadful terror bombing in Bali may wind up having a devastating effect on Australia’s football (soccer) leagues, whose players frequent the popular nightclubs that were bombed. A number of players are missing. Here’s an article about that. For the very latest news from Australia, click here.

Check out the captions…

This was the top story on Netscape Mail’s “news” page for at least several hours…

Following in the grand tradition of El Niño, La Niña, the Summer of the Shark, and various heat waves, cold snaps, tornado spells and heavy-snow seasons, the western wildfires have become this season’s winner of the news media’s annual “worse-than-ever-before natural phenomenon” sweepstakes. All the elements are there — the destructive power of nature, the helpless humans stuck in the path of nature’s fury, and the “experts” with apocalyptic sentiments.

With this sort of story, it is never enough to simply report events as they happen — we must also be subjected to countless reports and analyses insinuating that this latest event is actually the dawn of a new era of crisis and calamity, probably attributable to global warming, or maybe global cooling, or, most likely of all, El Niño.

Nevermind that the law of averages dictates there will be some extraordinarily destructive natural phenomenon every year, probably a couple of times a year. These days, every single time something happens, the media would lead you to believe that it’s the end of the world. And so, here we go again.

That’s not to say the wildfires in Colorado, Arizona and elsewhere aren’t newsworthy — they certainly are. But the fevered coverage gets a bit excessive. Then again, with pictures like this, it’s not hard to see why:

Yesterday, when the FBI announced that New York City was under a new terror threat, I received two “breaking news” e-mails from different news organizations, telling me what had happened.

Today, when D.C. police found Chandra Levy’s body, I received three.

CNN keeps showing us live pictures of Lady Liberty, as if they expect her to blow up at any moment. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan are “very close” to war. Aren’t they always?

If you’ve been watching CNN or visiting its website lately, you could be excused for believing that every American will inevitably suffer one of two fates this summer: we’ll either be blown up by terrorists, or eaten by sharks.

However, CNN is giving us some calming news on at least one front: Al Qaeda did not attend the “terror summit” in Beirut, contrary to what ABC News said earlier. So maybe Osama isn’t really conspiring with Hamas and Hezbollah to wreak havoc at the Hello Deli. Then again, maybe he is. As Tom Ridge says, we must be “vigilant.” (What does that mean, anyway?)

Meanwhile, the Ashcroft Justice Department is actually suing someone over the 2000 election in Florida. And, in cola-related news, Coca-Cola is apparently racist, and some Iranian company is now selling “Islamic” Coke. (Does that mean Vanilla Coke is officially a drink for infidels?)

The New York Daily News, usually the more liberal of New York’s two daily tabloids, gleefully reported yesterday on the controversy ignited by its archrival, the usually Bush-friendly New York Post, whose front page on Thursday stated that “BUSH KNEW” about the Sept. 11 attacks (or, at least, that he knew enough to stop them).

Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary, was none too pleased with the Post’s phraseology, especially after Sen. Hillary Clinton (herself usually a prime target for Post criticism) quoted the Post on the Senate floor! According to the Daily News, Fleischer said Clinton “immediately went to the floor of the Senate and, I’m sorry to say, that she followed that headline and divided,” rather than uniting, the nation.

Post editor in chief Col Allan “did not return a phone call from the Daily News yesterday,” the Daily News reported Saturday. Now THERE’S a real shocker.

Last night on CNN’s “NewsNight,” anchor Aaron Brown made a remarkable statement at the top of the show that essentially amounted to an apology for doing too much coverage of the Robert Blake case on the previous night’s show. I happened to catch it live, and I found a transcript today. Here is the transcript.