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Will Rodrick Taylor get on the front page?
By adamg on Tue, 06/24/2008 - 9:50am
Last night, I spoke to some graduate journalism students at Northeastern about, well, things such as Universal Hub. I told them there's a big opportunity for folks like them in non-traditional media because mainstream media, at least in Boston, just misses so much.
I asked them if they'd heard of Rodrick Taylor. Nobody raised their hands. Then I asked them if they'd heard of Neil Entwistle. Almost all of them raised their hands.
Entwistle's on the front page of both paper's today as his case goes to the jury. Taylor's equally horrific case (Alleged drug dealer charged with killing a cheerleader who wouldn't sleep with him, stuffing her body in a closet in her own apartment, then burning her body in Franklin Park) could go to the jury in the next few days.
What are the odds this case will make it to the front page when it goes to the jury? Here's a hint: Since May 16, when the Taylor trial began, the Globe has run exactly one story (recounting opening arguments). In the same period, the Globe ran 13 stories about the Entwistle trial and five stories about jury selection, including a story about how his parents are standing by him (there were also a couple of news briefs).
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Comments
So, would you say the Globe
So, would you say the Globe is ignoring the other case because the victim, Dominique Samuels, was of the wrong color? Or perhaps old media organizations like the Globe are so totally irrelevant today that they're hopeless. Maybe it's both.
Hardly an 'old media' problem
It's hardly an old media vs. new media thing. Count the number of blog posts about the Entwistle trial vs. the blog posts on the Taylor trial. It's quite a bit more than 20 to 1, and bloggers don't have the excuse of a finite news hole or a finite amount of air time. The public at large is more interested in the Entwistle trial because, well, it's an exceptionally interesting case.
It's fine if you want to make the point that people suck for being more interested in one than the other -- that it's a race thing, or a class thing, or whatever. But blaming the media -- either old or new -- is just blaming the messenger.
I do blame the messenger in this case
The more Old Media reports on the Entwistle case, the more bloggers will post about it. Let's face it: Old Media continues to provide much of the fodder on which current-events blogging relies. If Old Media were providing as much Entwistle coverage as they are Rodrick Taylor coverage, you'd see a lot fewer blog posts about the case (were there as many blog posts about that crazy killer farm woman up in New Hampshire? She didn't seem to get quite the amount of coverage as Dashing Young Neil).
You're right, it is a fascinating case, of the sort that has fascinated people for decades, probably centuries.
But what makes it so much more interesting than any of several equally repugnant murder cases going on at basically the same time in Boston? Is it, as the previous commenter suggested, a racial thing? One could certainly make the case - just compare the color of the suspects and victims in the cases (and the Carnes case, and the double-murdering JP case, etc., etc.). One could also make the case that Boston media are simply abandoning the city in favor of a more lucrative suburban market that doesn't really care about the disposition of cases involving a bunch of poor people in the old neighborhood (today's Globe story about the guy who shot poor Kay Leigh Harriott being an exception, although that whole sad case now revolves around redemption, and the Globe loves redemption stories).
What makes it so much more interesting
What makes it so much more interesting is that the guy is arguing that he's innocent in the face of seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I understand your point about bias, but did you read the story today? His lawyer says that Entwistle returned the murder weapon to his FIL's house, whereas before he'd said otherwise.
It's about as fascinating as, say, a white Bronco escaping at 30MPH.
I'll admit it: I've been trying to avoid Entwistle stories
But I can't help it - I turn on 'BZ to hear the traffic and see if anything in Boston has exploded and there's Carl Stevens reporting from Woburn, so it seeps in.
Yes, that's a bizarre argument, but that happened on the last day of the trial, not two weeks ago. Old Media was laying in supplies for their reporters stationed in Woburn long before the trial even opened. Why one suburban chain set up an entire Web site just for trial coverage (they, at least, can claim the story as a local one).
Sorry, I don't buy it ...
Sorry, I don't buy the argument that the Globe is racist because it decided to cover the Entwistle trial. As you yourself note, it's a fascinating case. People are interested. I'm sorry if that's an inconvenient fact.
Yes, Neil Entwhisle is white. But in the three major Globe stories about murders I can remember off the top of my head -- about the Johnson sisters, Victor Torres, and the shooting last week in Roxbury -- the victims were black or Hispanic.
I think only three of the 28 murder victims in Boston this year have been white, and I don't remember the Globe doing more than short stories about any of them.
Clarification, then
The Globe and the Herald both do a good job covering major, awful crimes in Boston when they happen. They both are sucking majorly when it comes to covering the trials that result from those crimes a year or two later.
As for racism, I'm not sure I buy that argument, either. I think they've just decided to abandon coverage of certain things in Boston (such as trials) because it's Boston and not suburbia. I bet you if some guy in, oh, Hopkinton, killed his uncle's boyfriend and his stepfather - after threatening another relative with a knife - that trial would be in the papers every day.
You have a point, but ...
You have a point, though you're overstating it. The media in general -- of all types, new, old, middle aged -- is not that good covering process. Process is most often boring. Trials are most often boring. They hardly ever have the drama of "Law and Order."
The Entwistle trial is a bit different. It's got a modicum of drama -- many unanswered questions, clashing expert witnesses, defense attorneys going mano-a-mano with the prosecution, etc.
The Taylor trial, no matter how horrible the crime, is pretty routine. I'm sure the verdict will be reported, as it should be, and as the start of the trial was.
As for the Globe "deciding to abandon" coverage of trials in Boston in favor of suburbia, I'm not convinced. The paper I read is not filled with stories about suburban trials. In fact, this is only one. There have been others over the years, of course, but the only one I can think of is Louise Woodward.
Now, it's certainly true that the Globe is not filled with Boston trials either, but it never has been in my 25 years of reading regularly. The Globe and Herald and the TV stations have always cherry picked trials to cover. With upwards of 100 murder trials a year (not to mention trials of countless lesser crimes), how could they do anything else? (The newspapers, at least, do seem to report verdicts with regularity.)
If you measure local coverage by the number of murder trials splashed all over the paper then, yeah, their coverage sucks. But you only need to go back a few years to the "trash tabloid" Herald and the "if it bleeds it leads" news at Channel 7 for a clue about how the opposite goes over with the public.
OK, so they've historically sucked
I'll buy that (I'm not looking for "if it bleeds it leads" coverage, either, but are one-paragraph updates too much to ask for?)
Still, it's interesting that a Jamaica Plain double-murder trial goes to the jury today and there's not a word about it in the Globe, following yesterday's front-page story about the Entwistle case going to the jury (although the Globe does find the space to inform us that menhaden stocks in Narragansett Bay are on the rebound - good news for you menhaden fans!).
you dont have to buy it its
you dont have to buy it its sold sign sealed and delivered. The status quo is very evident what takes priority in media and what is not news worthy or worth exposure the characteristics are always the same some how but as we will explain it was just coincidence.?
Follow-Up Always Stinks
I agree with mavenista. Media always seems to be bad with process and follow up with all kinds of stories.
I haven't heard anything more about the truck that made Packard's Corner look like a bomb went off. I can't find any more about the Coolidge Corner crash either. If there are updates, they are buried in the back.
The knocked-up Gloucester Girls and Entwistle are the two stories the papers think people are interested in hearing about and will sell the most papers.
Follow-Up
I admit a bias here, but part of a media outlet's duty should be to reflect what's happening in its region. If killers in Suffolk County are being tried and convicted at rates approaching 95%, then newspaper readers should be aware of that -- if only because it reminds them that there is accountability for people who would use deadly violence on their streets.
Failing to report that -- or reporting it as an afterthought, or reporting it only when it happens in the suburbs -- can, I think, contribute to a climate in which neither law-abiding residents nor potential violent offenders in the city think criminal justice system has any teeth.
This is especially true when murders and shootings get such high-profile coverage. Criminal justice reporting doesn't count as such when it lacks the "justice" part.
If anyone thinks it's the facts of the Entwistle case and not the principals' location and social status that makes it "interesting," then Google "Jims Beneche."