Peter Braunstein, by the numbers

During the Braunstein Blitz of media coverage following the Hallowe’en sexual assault by the above-mentioned “fire fiend” I started to notice that the blitz was coming mainly from the New York Post and the New York Daily News, with extra coverage from Gawker on a wide range of topics. Where was the New York Times on this huge New York story? A few days ago when Braunstein was captured, I did a quick archive search at the NYT to see – from his date of capture, there had been a whopping three news stories on Peter Braunstein, not including David Carr‘s column lambasting bloggers who “joke about the unfunny.” Since then there have been three round-up articles, but it seemed a bit odd that the NYT’s definition of “All The News That’s Fit To Print” would exclude ongoing coverage of a big NYC story. How, I wondered, did it stack up against coverage by other outlets? Here are the results (from November 1, 2005 – present):

Number of times “Peter Braunstein” was mentioned in the New York Daily News: 80

Number of times “Peter Braunstein” was mentioned in the New York Post: 77

Number of times “Fire Fiend” was mentioned in the New York Post: 20

Number of results for “Peter Braunstein” on NY1.com: 22

Number of results for “Peter Braunstein” in the New York Times : 7

Number of results for “Peter Braunstein” in the New York Observer archives: 2 (which we know is wrong based on the number of “Wood War” NYP-NYDN cover juxtapositions on The Media Mob alone, but we’re not masochistic enough to count them. But, apparently Observer blogs don’t count in archive searches).

Number of items on Gawker: 47 (48 if you count the Jan. 8, 2004 report of Braunstein being commited to a mental hospital after a fight with his W magazine girlfriend – all too briefly, unfortunately.)

Number of items on Jossip: 33

Number of creepy Craigslist Ads that purported to be inside Braunstein’s head:4

Number of creepy New York cover stories that purported to be inside Braunstein’s head:1

Afterthought: Number of times “Peter Braunstein” was referenced in Fishbowl items, not including this one: 4 (rationale here — cough David Carr cough).

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