WWN Days 3 and 4 -- Dodging A Bullet

It's 7/7/7 folks. On a day that I thought only the Sweet brothers and their Stryper bandmates could get excited about, I'm getting the impression they aren't alone in getting all atwitter over today. But I won't harp on that, because I've been guilty on more than one occasion of watching the clock tick to 1:23 p.m. (I still maintain that's not as goofy as staying up until 1:09 a.m. ... the 69th minute of the day, Beavis!).

Okay, so I promised examples of decent journalism, and today's entry comes from an online news source. I bookmarked this in May in anticipation of this year's WWN, recognizing that this story fit the model of the type of stuff they taught us in school (you know -- the stuff few follow anymore).

A shining example of "Man Bites Dog," this story is almost too crazy to believe. No, it's not one of those "News of the Weird" headlines that make for interesting Darwin Awards fodder, but are a little too sensational to be considered news. This is the type of stuff that makes even the most ardent skeptics wonder if there's more to life than the science that creates and destroys it. Check it out:

http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=70980

And for the record, I expect this dude to eventually be Colorado's first Powerball winner ... he certainly deserves it.

I could get into the minutia of how and why this story represents proper journalism, but I'll stick with a few general points instead. The headline properly summarizes the main point of the story (I can't tell you how often I read a headline that speaks to details that aren't addresses until the seventh paragraph of the story ... not good). The lead paragraph is almost perfect (the "thanks to..." bit is a little editorial), serving the simple purpose it has been assigned. Better yet, the follow-up paragraph builds on this AND tells the reader exactly why this story is so unique. Then it goes directly into a quote, which does its job of supporting the preceding paragraph. All told, the story sticks to the prototypical model that all journalists are taught.

We could discuss other mechanical elements of the story that are in line with standards, but I've already made this dry enough. The real point I want to make about this is the news can and does report on murders, violent crimes, etc., all day long, but this story here is the one example of why such a crime is news. The majority of other stories are just crap and, in my opinion, the result of lazy journalism and an underachieving news desk.

I'm not saying a community should turn a blind eye to what happens in their cities, but you reach a certain population size where reporting on drive-bys, gang violence, murder, etc., no longer makes much sense, at least not in an ad hoc fashion. In fact, perpetually focusing on these types of stories brings about (wait for it, wait for it) -- desensitization. There, I said it. But I'm not going to get into it, because at the end of the day, you either believe densensitization is real or not. I would even argue that the net effect isn't as passive as densensitization. Quite frankly, I think an incessant flow of news into the brain warps our perspectives and shapes our opinions in unnatural ways. But ahhhhh, I've strayed ... mea culpa and all that.

So instead of choosing to randomly cover various acts of violence in isolation, I again say the news needs to dig deeper. Look at this stuff in aggregate -- "What are we doing as a community to curb violence?" "What progress has the police made with breaking down drug rings, gang factions?" "Which individuals are making a real difference with unique, unselfish contributions that help bring positive change to their communities?" (the latter always gets buried at the end of a newscast, and is delivered in too fluffy of a manner).

Perhaps I'm just a snob for substantive news analysis or I just can't accept that the media became bored with doing things the old way. Obviously, we can't do away with the down and dirty hard news, but I will always maintain that how that news is selected, packaged and delivered makes all the difference.

To their credit, 9News has a winner with this story ... let's see more of it.