It is beyond heartbreaking that the LA Times, in its ever-diminishing wisdom, has decided to put the publication of the Homicide Report “on hiatus.” As most of you know, The Homicide report is the LA Times blog that was started by Jill Leovy nearly two years ago because she felt that someone needed to take note of every single homicide in Los Angeles. She nominated herself as that someone. Her editors, to their great credit, went along with Jill’s idea.
The Homicide Report quickly became one of the Times’ most read online features. More than any other continuing section in the paper it humanized the city through— of all things—the lens of its violent deaths. For families of those murdered, the Homicide Report was a validation, a guarantee that a loved one didn’t die unnoticed.
Almost from the beginning, comments began to appear under each one of her stories about the dead. The comments came from the victims’ family, from friends, from neighbors. Those commenting told stories, offered condolences, shared grief. Through Jill’s efforts, where there had been no public notice at all, suddenly there was community.
For these reasons, the report became of enormous value and comfort to many of the Los Angeles neighborhoods that are often, shall we say, less than well-served by Los Angeles media in general, and by the LA Times in particular.
The Times pulled Jill off the Homicide Report once the site’s first year was finished, but other good reporters, like Richard Winton, filled in.
Then with all the election fever, the Homicide Report fell to 17th among LA Times most read blogs. But rather than wait to see if its popularity came back up again after the election madness settled down, the Times unplugged it.
It was a sad and shameful decision.
But, hey, we get it. We really do. When the LA Times powers-that-be assessed the Homicide Report purely on a short-term cost/benefit basis—-they concluded that local death just wasn’t delivering the right bang for the buck.
I checked the report every few days. The election may have been a factor, but the traffic fell mostly because they stopped updating it daily or even regularly starting more than a month ago.
Just another sign of that the LA Times is circling the drain.
I am happy that it is gone. The LA Times should cover the neighborhoods that people died in within the Homicide Report Blog should have been covered like other sections of the city. Maybe if the LA Times had done that, covered those communities with depth maybe less people would be dead.
That blog didn’t humanize anything, it just gave people who didn’t live in the neighborhoods that those people died in, ideas for funding themselves.
The blog did benefit certain people, none of the working class or people of color though.
Browne
Thanks for the insight, LAL.
Agreed, Browne, the LA Times is woefully inadequate in the way it covers whole parts of the city.
But, in terms of the Homicide Report, I don’t agree at all. I know more people than I’d like who have lost family members to gang violence, for whom the blog meant a lot. And those doing the grieving were nearly all working class people of color.
Not sure what the “funding themselves” thing means.
So, we’re just not supposed to pay attention when there’s a death? I don’t get it.
Every death in Los Angeles deserves a face put to it, and a name, and a life. Prior to the Homicide Report it was very clear that the media found some deaths much more important than others. Jill did her best to change that.
And guess what, my dear, you don’t have to be a person of color to get your heart repeatedly ripped up by the violence in this city.
You are supposed to pay attention to people when they are alive. If you pay attention to people when they are alive then their death becomes a tragedy, it becomes real. People who are people get cops to respond to them. People who are people get cops to help them. People are statistics get cops to harass them.
People who are statistic get cops not responding to deaths and over responding to bs, just this week I had to hand over my ID twice, because I could not produce my ticket quick enough on the Blue Line. When I was writing on my computer in a downtown Starbucks a cop followed me in and asked the barista was I being “ok”.
This happens because I am not human being to the general community.
So I took the Homicide Blog very seriously because it impacted my daily life and how I am perceived and how people who look like me are perceived.
When you only pay attention to people when they die then they become a statistic.
Now this was not Jill’s fault. It was simply the wrong venue for that blog.
That blog made no sense in the LA Times house, a house that has no respect for people of color. We are sensationalized stories for them. We are book deals to their writers. We are potential ad dollars if we have enough of a population.
People of color are not people to the writers and editors of the LA Times. We are not people, because we are not friends of this guy or that guy and we do not go to school with you, we don’t go to your dinner parties, we don’t get random coverage for features unless it’s a Latino, African or Asian themed holiday. We are simply statistics to be manipulated by the writers, the editors and the publisher of the LA Times.
And while many people of color have the battered wife syndrome and are happy with any attention paid to them regardless of how destructive that attention is I am of the school stay out of my house if you can’t respect my house. The LA Times needs to do a better job at getting people who know the communities of color beyond:
The poor.
The gangmembers.
The “please help” me.
The community of color is more than just welfare, gangs, social programs and advocacy work. And when the LA Times (and the LA media in general, this would include the blogoshere) learns to do that with their coverage, make us human like they do with upper middle class white people, then and only then should a Homicide Blog be considered.
There is alot more than happens south of the 10 freeway than people getting killed.
Browne
All good points, Browne.
I’m still in favor of the Homicide Report. Last night at around 8 p.m., as I stood looking at another dead young man in his casket, a kid I knew and really cared about, I was not at all okay with the fact that we have a local media world that considered his death too insignificant to ever print his name anywhere. Whereas had he been from another part of town he would have qualified as important enough.
But I get what you’re saying in terms of the collateral impact something like the Homicide Report could—and likely does— have, especially when it isn’t balanced out by broader reporting on the same communities whose members show up week after week among those listed.
In any case, thanks for saying what you did so clearly and passionately.
Browne, I just went over and read what you wrote on the issue at LA East side. Very good stuff.
(And for anyone else who’d like to read.)
http://tinyurl.com/6jgbmh