Some of you may remember a young woman named Chelsey Powers. She was shot to death a little more than a year ago. Our most recent story was in late May. She was a freshman at Reynolds High School.
This past weekend, we covered another high-school tragedy, that of a young man named Matt Gfeller, who died while playing football. He was a sophomore at Reynolds. We remade our front page for Sunday, and followed up with another story today, and my guess is that there is further coverage to come.
Two kids. Two tragic deaths. Two very different levels of coverage. Why? It is a difficult question. There are a couple of reasons, to my mind. First, Matt’s death happened in front of several thousand people at a game. Chelsey was killed in front of her home at 2 a.m. Second—and unfortunately—children dying playing football is rarer than children being shot to death. Third, the community responded in different and more public ways that made this past weekend’s events a larger story.
Certainly, there are socioeconomic factors as well. The Gfellers are wealthier and better-connected than the Powerses, but I think that’s secondary to what made us react the way we did. To me, the main thing was the public nature of the event and the grieving.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
the photo of the player crying should have run inside. using grief on the front page, to sell newspapers which are already hurting from the economy,is, to my mind, taking advantage of the reader and the person and the family of the teen.
tabloid journalism is eeking into mainstream journalism with the john edwards story. i think mainstream journalism is eeking into tabloid journalism, and it’s like this - i wouldn’t want you taking a picture of my family crying in public at a funeral or accident. and i certainly wouldn’t want it on the front page. publishing a picture like that is like throwing gasoline on the fire of grief. imagine how many kids saw that for the first time in a box and knew the kid…
it’s proof how badly you want to rack up n.c. press association trophies. i didn’t say not to run it. sports seldom makes the front page. i wouldn’t run it at all, but if it ran inside, it would probably be black and white which lessens the impact and puts distance between pain and need for a press award.
“that’s a good picture.” you want a reader to say that when you deserve the praise, not for taking advantage of someone who has just lost a loved one. at west kids were going around with the kid’s number on their hands. respect. they didn’t wear t-shirts of the guy crying.
an idea - put the pic on t-shirts and sell them. make money off the grief.
Tim: Thanks for writing. I know you’ve worked at other papers, but you have a misunderstanding of how this newsroom operates and what drives our decision making. It’s not taking advantage of grief to sell newspapers or about winning awards; it’s about appropriately and compassionately chronicling a community’s grief during tragedy. Any picture of the young people at the vigil on Saturday that was faithful to the event would have shown young people grieving. There’s no other way around it. This was the most important story in the paper on Sunday. We chose the best art that complemented the story and reflected the events as they unfolded.
“art” is insider talk for photograph. it’s not even a bona fide photograph after the many processes it goes through before reaching the press. remember the photographer from the charlotte paper who got stripped of a photo award for fixing up a photograph?
photographs never compliment a story. reporter have to carry around photographers and make excuses for their wicked behavior. our’s in boone once was a jehovah’s witness and offered arlo guthrie a watchtower in the middle of my interview, and arlo was gracious.
i was mortified. it reminded me of my recurring nightmare of being naked in school in front of the class via “jeremy” music video from pearl jam.
i’ve been there in the pit. the skateboard park in myrtle beach was dedicated for a kid who was killed from a head injury during a fall. young people were weeping and wailing. i put my camera up. i’m a sensible journalist, who who carries a pen, recorder and pic-machine. sometimes it’s time to take a pic - like when a cop barked “NO!” at me on Main Street North Myrtle Beach as I took a pic of a guy murdered by gun. I knew the pic would not run. there was blood in the pic. the guy looked dead. bad for tourism. bad for rack sales.
you should chronicle the grief of the former news and observer food editor who had to resort to freelancing at last week’s tourism conference held in charlotte - out of work because of no rack sales.
i know that money and rack sales push all editorial decisions. got war? go shopping.
Actually Chelsey Powers death should have more coverage because an innocent human being shot dead and it’s really awaful to have this kind of death for any people.This is the most hushed-up story I’ve seen in a long time. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
there’s another shop talk phrase entitled “above the fold.” that’s referring to what is deemed more important than other news or features or sports or weather.
i had an investigative piece set for a sunday paper once, and it was set there because the sunday issue had the most circulation. unfortunately big exposes are held, sometimes indefinitely, because of the fact more people will pick up a sunday paper, spending more at the rack. we had to stop our subscription to save money in these economic times, and the fella in india told us he would stop it in august. it’s still coming.
i’ve been rethinking this thing, and I suppose it was okay to run that pic on the front page in stunning color. it’s interesting it is a male and not a female. to see a male express emotion is rare, especially in public. i don’t cry anymore myself. when i played football at scotland high in laurinburg, they fed us salt tablets which is not done today. our coach was a madman, up-downs after lost games. we’d suffer. he’s on the school board down there now. i tell my buddies that they ran off and fired the witch-teacher, but they put a warlock on the durn school board.
it felt so good to hit someone in high school football. i wanted to kill people. it was fair and square according to the n.c. department of public instruction. i clipped behind the play. our center and i broke a guy’s collarbone once after he poked his finger through our center’s mask.
better helmets? won’t help. less violence? helps.
AoC: Why do you think the Chelsey Powers story is hushed up, and if you have information, please let me know.
Tragedy but we have to learn the hard way of life.
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