I have this weird interest in the front page of the New York Times. One afternoon a few weeks ago I got quasi-Aspergic about it. It turns out you can look at any New York Times front page since February 13, 2002 by using a URL formatted like this one. Just enter the appropriate year, month and day.

Anyway, I realized that in all of 2007, the Times ran only two banner headlines. Neither of them took up more than one line and neither was in all caps, which usually identifies something REALLY IMPORTANT.

The first was on March 7, 2007, after Scooter Libby was convicted:

The second was on April 17, 2007, reporting the Virginia Tech shootings:

In fact, the last time the Times ran a multi-line, all-caps banner headline was more than a year ago (December 30, 2006), after Saddam Hussein was hanged:

I wonder if the Times is trying to de-emphasize banner headlines.