Blathr Wayne Lorentz

This morning the big story on WGN-TV news was another mugging in Chicagoʼs Lincoln Park neighborhood, as illustrated by the screenshot above.

Why is yet another mugging in the nationʼs third-largest city a big news story? As a former television news producer, I can answer that.

• Itʼs part of a series of muggings that appear to be caused by the same group of people.
• It happened in a part of the city that is generally considered safe.
• It happened in the middle of the day.
• The mugger threatened to shoot the victimʼs dog.
• There was video available of the crime.

I canʼt speak to what happened in the WGN-TV newsroom when this story was written. I can, however, state that if I had aired this story in any of the cities where I produced TV news — Chicago, Houston, Cincinnati, and even Green Bay — the newsroom would have gotten complaint calls from people claiming that the only reason we aired the story is because it happened in a “white” neighborhood.

This is incorrect.

While itʼs true that muggings happen all the time Chicago neighborhoods that are more “diverse” and impoverished than Lincoln Park, the reason this was a big story is because it was the intersection of the five factors listed above. And of all those factors, the last one is the most important: There was video.

Television is a visual medium. TV without pictures is called “radio.”

Lincoln Park is a rich neighborhood, which means more people can afford personal security cameras, which means more video of crime is available. Englewood, as a random example, is a poorer neighborhood, which means fewer people can afford personal security cameras. Therefore, thereʼs less video of crime from that area, and thus itʼs less likely to be the main story of the newscast, unless itʼs made into a larger piece with crime statistics and interviews with cops, politicians, criminologists, residents, and whoever else is available.

I canʼt count the number of times Iʼve had to weigh two news stories, and chose the lesser one simply because video was available. If the news program isnʼt visually compelling, itʼs an important factor in people tuning out, ratings going down, and the next thing you know, youʼre on the street.

Struggling to make important, but non-visual, stories more palatable to a television audience is the reason that TV stations put all kinds of text on the screen. A still picture with a caption over the anchorʼs shoulder. A list of bullet points on one side of the screen. Even putting text between two anchors sitting in front of a chroma wall. And sometimes all the visual tricks in the book canʼt make a non-visual story work on TV and Iʼve said, “Let radio have it.”

Race is often an easy answer to not understanding how things work, but in local news it is seldom the right answer.

On a side note, Iʼve noticed that reporters in Chicago now call muggings “robberies.” The common term for a mugging when I lived in Chicago was “strong-arm robbery.” Itʼs a very Chicago term with a long history. I suspect the problem is too many people working in Chicago TV who are not from Chicago, and not thoughtful enough to adopt the local customs.

Congratulations to the New York Times for not having to print any corrections on Monday, October 10^th.

That sounds bitchy, but itʼs not. Journalists donʼt take corrections lightly. Having issued a few, myself, I can tell you that it hurts a lot, and for a long time.

One difference between bloggers and journalists is that journalists let people know when they make mistakes, and print corrections. They donʼt just pop into WordPress and silently change things.

Since every single story on NBC Nightly News is labeled “Breaking News,” I wonder what the producers will use when thereʼs actual breaking news to report.

“Breaking News! We Really Mean It This Time!” Or maybe “ZOMG!!!WTF!!BBQ!!!11!1!” might work.

Dear RTHK,

If the government wants to silence you for doing your job, then you must be doing something right.

— A former journalist

This is what happens when your mapping database doesnʼt have coordinates for a town. It puts the town in Kansas.

In this case, the New York Times map jammed Newton, New Jersey in the middle of Kansas. It probably thinks other towns are there, too.

Never trust any data. Always check for NULL and improbable values.

Being unemployed leaves you with no money. Not having money means youʼre poor. That was easy.

This feels like a think piece put together by a Northwestern grad whoʼs never been poor.

Maybe people wouldnʼt think the world is flat, if journalists went back to saying “around the world” instead of “across the world.”

I watched NewsNation today. For a Tribune product itʼs not bad. Itʼs not good, but itʼs not people screaming at me for an hour telling me that Iʼm going to die. Itʼs like a newscast on mood stabilizers. Remember the early days of CNN when you would just turn it on and let it run in the background and kind of dip in and out? Thatʼs what NewsNation is for.

When I was in J school, we were issued little pamphlets from the New York Times titled How To Read The New York Times. It was very useful, and one of those things that would be useful for people to read today since so many are burdened by information overload.

The instructions went something like this:

1. Throw away all of the sections you donʼt like.
2. Put the remaining sections in order of priority.
3. Look at the headlines on each page. If a headline doesnʼt interest you, move on.
4. If a headline interests you, read the subhead or the photo caption. If youʼre not interested or arenʼt learning anything new, move on.
5. Read the first three paragraphs of the article. Move on when you stop learning something new.

This method is still remarkably effective, especially for plowing through a fat pile of Sunday papers.

The only Times sections I toss are the Book Review and the Magazine. I like books, but I want to form my own opinion about them. And the Magazine is just hard to read. The paper is too glossy and the print too small for the stylish lighting in my abode.

Counterintuitively, I find the Sports section quite compelling. Even though I have near zero interest in sportsball, thereʼs always an article in there that is intellectually intriguing. A couple of weeks ago there was a good piece about how “home field advantage” is a thing of the past because teams are so pampered in their palatial practice facilities that even when they play in their home stadium, theyʼre playing on unfamiliar territory. Fun stuff.

Nice notification spam, New York Times.

I only have “Breaking News” selected in my notification settings, which the app says is supposed to be “Urgent and important stories.” By definition, the Opinion page is not breaking news.

At a time when America needs journalism more than ever, there's a sign up at Starbucks stating that today is the last day that it will sell newspapers.

I wish I had a coffee shop alternative, but such is life in an American suburb.

There are twelve people at Starbucks this morning.

Three are reading the New York Times. Two are reading the local paper. One is reading a book. The rest are lost in their phones.

I guess journalismʼs not dead after all.

I have written down my memories of using a TRS-80 Model 100 as a journalist.

To keep it kosher, I wrote it on my TRS-80 Model 100.