In Yale murder case, NYT joins the tabs in heavy coverage

The Daily News and the NY Post -- not to mention CNN and most of the rest of the cable and broadcast networks -- have been pretty hyper in their coverage of the murder of Annie Le in New Haven. It's not surprising, I suppose. There may be have been, you know, an election in New York this week, not to mention that healthcare thing going on, and such. But this is the kind of thing they like.

I'm going to talk about the NYTimes, though, because I expect somewhat better. Their coverage has been awfully heavy, too, if less over-the-top. On several days this week they ran several updates during the day online, and it was frequently near the top of the homepage. Of the stories in print, one has run on page 1 (Monday's, announcing that the body had been found). No second story on the front page -- yet -- as the Wesleyan murder story got in May.

Still, putting an individual homicide on the front page at all (where neither the victim or the shooter is a police officer or famous) is pretty rare for the Times. There's a little more than a murder a day in the five boroughs (extremely low for a city of 8+ million) and most get scant attention in the Times.

The Times has had quite a few bylines on the story. Sunday's story had 3 reporters/contributors, Monday's had 5, Tuesday's had 6, Wednesday's had 9 and Thursday's story has 6. Sure, it's hard to know exactly how much staff time was spent on it; some of those contributors could have just made a call or two. Still.

The Boston Globe jumped in on the act, too. The Globe doesn't have a reporter based in the state, and usually only does their own coverage there for fairly major state political developments, yet they sent a reporter to New Haven for this one. The LAT, which has been covering the local angle (Le was from California) also sent a reporter to New Haven.

Why?