I have not been following current events lately. To an embarrassing degree actually & today I decided to turn that around.

There’s a ton of those “Most Dangerous City in the US” and “Murder Capital of the US” lists floating around on the internet, and one of the reasons I look at them when I happen to come across them is because Chicago comes up a lot. But I was rudely reminded that being on that list is more than just some ranking when I looked through the Trib this morning. It seemed a majority of the stories were murder reports. Journalism has to be a pretty harrowing profession in the windy city.

And as upsetting as those should be, I just imagined the reactions people were probably having: “Oh, another murder.” Skip to next story. And that’s even what I did, read a headline and moved on. I guess I don’t really see the preoccupation with reporting on murders when there is so much stuff out there to watch over. But murder is news, and when the city has a lot, it’s what you have to report. The whole “watchdog” aspect of journalism should be more than just throwing out facts about these murders. More productive writing should be addressing the reasons behind them, and although I feel it is impossible for a single journalist to come up with a solution, there should be some generation of further discussion that goes deeper than who killed who with what and where. This isn’t Clue. What’s the worst that can happen if we do a little more - oh yeah, nothing. But isn’t that the same as just sticking with the way it is now.

I feel like I just wrote 100 level Journalism class weekly journal entry haha.

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Redemption

cuz you gotta have one

House approves civil unions for same-sex couples

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-30/news/ct-met-illinois-civil-unions-20101130_1_civil-unions-openly-gay-lawmakers-gay-rights

Hey Chicago - at least you’re doing something right!

Other things the Trib taught me:

-Turns out I suck at crossword puzzles when just a year ago I was kickin’ ass. Challenge Accepted.

-Turns out I struggle when trying to complete level 2 sudoku, only to wind up with two 7’s in one row.

December 01, 2010, 11:29pm   Comments