News-Record.com

Interesting dilemma.

I think it belongs on the front page (although I'm hard to convince that most homicides don't belong on A1 or B1), but I think centerpiece treatment might have been too much.

The photo is an excellent news photo and I wonder how big of a factor that was in the decision making process. It looks like the only other front-pager with art was the weather story -- and there's no doubt in my mind that that doesn't belong in the centerpiece slot. I don't generally read weather stories, (my exception: when the paper is letting me know that a hurricane, blizzard, or plague of locusts is coming, I'll read that). I'd even argue that a slightly-bad weather-might-be-could-be-coming story doesn't belong on a section front (sorry Jason, you did a great job with it, by the way).

I believe homicides should be given good play for three reasons: a) violent crime is a serious blight on the community and people need to know when it happens; b) a violent death is a tragedy, the victims of which deserve to be remembered as more than a line in the police blotter; and c) they make for good copy that readers devour.

So where do you place them? To me, the unusual homicides go on A1, the more, run-of-the-mill go on B1. From my experience in writing about murders in general and in Guilford County in particular they typical fall into three categories: drug-related, domestic violence, and robbery-gone-wrong (often drug-related).

This one is only slightly unusual, so far, in that the police didn't provide enough detail for a logical narrative to come forward. Basically they're saying they've got a woman stabbed to death at home, and that's about it. If there were any inkling that this was a domestic-violence or drug-related killing, I would argue that probably moves it back to B1 absent anything else that makes it unusual.

The argument about neighborhood strikes me as a poor one, and I don't think it should be a part of the decision making process. By elevating a homicide in a 'nice' neighborhood, it implicitly says that the homicides in neighborhoods where crime is more likely to occur are somehow less important. Yet a person has still met a violent, presumably unjustified, death.

I'm not sure what I would've put in its place though. The other two A1 stories don't look like they would've had art and I wouldn't bump up the weather story. I probably would've wanted to push weather to B and pull a centerpiece off the wire.

Sorry JR, I didn't intend to write that much. I guess school is making me wordy.

John, your logic is thin and faulty. You didn't have much else and so you ran with what you thought was a sexy story. Sounds like a plot taken right out of this season's "The Wire." Black life is somehow much less important than white life and not worth front page. The same logic is used is police response time. Right neighborhood gets immediate response. In my neighborhood, that's not the case. Our former mayor pro tem found this to be the case.

John,
Isn't that your neighborhood as well? There's shootings every day on my block (the bullet holes are still in my bedroom wall but I'll plaster it up next week) but I guess New Irving Park isn't used to such things.

Perhaps a little more attention paid to crime in my neighborhood would help reduce crime where you live. After all, we don't have nearly all the expensive toys your neighborhood has.

As for the question you posed? It's just a damned shame that innocent people have to die before our leaders will do anything other than lip service to solve the problems. Murders should be so rare that all murders make the front page and would be if city leaders would face the truth.

And you know the odds are very good the break-in was gang related.

Robin, look at the paper again. We had plenty of other things we could do. But yes, the story is sexy. We don't have homicides that often in such high-scale neighborhoods. That makes it unusual and is a factor in news decisions. As for your statement that black life is less important and not worth the front page: I submit that had a black family lived in that house and this happened, it would have gotten the same consideration. And to say that we don't cover homicides of black people or put them on the front page is simply dead wrong and you know it.

Billy, that's not my neighborhood, no.

You asked a question and provided a flimsy answer. Don't get upset when the reader doesn't buy it. Face it - the killing of white women sells - radio, TV, newspapers. That's the state of things

Upset? Who's upset? I'm ok with you not buying it. I just expected more than opinions and accusations when you make your case.

To your point: We had plenty else for the centerpiece, and we have put plenty of stories about the life and death of African Americans on the front page. I can't answer for police response time.

Is it that this story isn't worth the centerpiece or that we don't put every homicide in the same position?

For the initiated, Robin and I are former co-workers and, I hope, old friends.

Crime will continue to grow in Greensboro because the GPD is dysfunctional and without competent leadership. Gang related crime will also continue to rise until the city council gets thier heads out of the sand and get proactive instead of inane meetings. If you want to know about initiations, oh yes there are initiations usually the shooting of a rival gang member but sometimes it's some one in the wrong place at the wrong time, and inner workings of gangs like MS-13 give a call to the LA Police Dept. I'm sure they'd be happy to fill the council in on the reality of well organized gangs. The GPD was once a showcase of a police dept. but now it has no competent functional leadership.