Curiouser and Curiouser

Feb. 27, 2002

This is just a small observation, but it sure seems like there‘s a lot more crime on the front pages of local newspapers than there used to be, and lurid crime at that.
Whether it‘s the Shulick murder trial in Charlevoix or the horse abuse case in Leelanau, some of these stories seem to have a halflife longer than the ghost of Hamlet‘s father.
Dwelling on crime has been a time-proven and excellent strategy for newspapers. When publisher William Randolph Hearst moved from San Francisco to New York City in 1895, a lot of folks laughed at his plans to pump up a tiny newspaper called the Journal in a town that included such giants as the New York Times, the World, the Sun and the Post.
No one laughed for long, however, because Hearst‘s story mix of murder, sex, “sob sister“ exposés and endless promotions had the same effect on New York‘s newspapers as the 911 attack. With stories such as “How It Feels to Be a Murderer“ and ghoulish reports of child killings and prostitute murders, Hearst took the 77,000 circulation Journal to levels which outgunned Joseph Pulitzer‘s World, which was publishing 500,000 copies per day at the time.
So it‘s true that crime moves newspapers, and you can‘t help but wonder how many people there are in Northern Michigan who rush to their papers each day (or week as the case may be) primarilly for news of the latest stabbing, shooting or rape victim.
Far be it for me to criticize a winning strategy -- this summer we‘ll experiment with some crime coverage of our own, since that‘s what readers seem to be lusting after. Then too, as humorist Garrison Keillor noted in a recent article, these days crime news is about the only good reason to read newspapers. Keillor feels that over the past few decades, newspapers have gone too deeply into the sort of feel-good “community journalism“ that tends to be boring and beige.
Still, you have to wonder, how much crime is too much? If you‘ve ever watched the evening news on Channel 50 out of Detroit, you get the feeling that the whole town is crawling with maniacs bent on an orgy of rape, dismemberment, serial murder, carjacking, hit-and-runs... The rest of the program is rounded out with lighter fare along the lines of wife-swapping, child abuse, prostitution, animal attacks and the like. No doubt the much-revered Mr. Hearst would approve (the station has great ratings), but Channel 50 does go a bit over the top in conveying the idea that Detroit is a total madhouse. A few evenings with Motown‘s TV news ghouls and you wonder why Engler doesn‘t just send in the National Guard to shoot everyone.
I hope we‘re not seeing the same transformation of terror here in Northern Michigan via a media that‘s obsessing over crime. Reading the local papers you sometimes get the impression that every young man who‘s a year or two on either side of 20 is some kind of malicious redneck thug -- especially if he happens to hail from some boondock town such as Mancelona or Cadillac.
If you didn‘t know better, you‘d wonder why we aren‘t shipping these punks all off to gulags in Greenland, yet the reality is that most young men hereabouts are rather sweet and earnest individuals, eager to do the right thing and do well in their jobs and relationships. We shouldn‘t lose sight of that.
Then there‘s the subject of sex -- Hearst‘s other great ingredient for success. Sex in the newspapers of Northern Michigan is a taboo which expresses itself through an obsession with perversion and violence: kids getting blowjobs on a bus, child sexual abuse, rape -- mostly the far hideous violent end of our experience as sexual beings. You won‘t find any celebration of the joyful, lusty, sexy aspects of our lives -- the idea that sex might be kind of fun offends a handful of puritan readers who find nothing wrong with the sick, but can‘t handle the sensual. Sex to them -- and most newspapers as well -- is “dirty.“
As Alice said of her trip to Wonderland: “Curiouser and curiouser.“