Otterblog

I’ve been thinking about murder tonight.

There is an incredible story in Chapel Hill today. The student body president was found shot to death, maybe a carjacking. 22 years old. Morehead-Cain scholar. Pre-med, etc. etc.

And closer to home, Winston-Salem had its first homicide this year, a 45-year-old man shot to death in a drive-by shooting. Another waste.

And there are the suicide bombings in Iraq, where 50+ people are dead.

Newsrooms are a cynical place, by habit, maybe by design and default. But we don’t joke about events like these or how to play them. Sorting through these deaths, this editorial triage of the day, is a grim task.  It’s about applying news judgment to death, and by extension, placing relative values on human lives. Which is more important to our understanding of the world, of our community: a seemingly random crime 80 miles away; a probably less random crime in our city; a truckload of death half a world away that underscores how much work is left to be done in Iraq.

And then when you get all that done, you’re left with this question: which is the better story? The story that more readers will be interested in. I didn’t say should be interested in, but will be. For tomorrow, it’s the student body president. They’re all universal stories, with issues that go beyond the immediate cause and effect But a dead student body president at the state’s flagship public university tops the list.