Back
in the late 1980s when I was at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago,
there were times when I felt like my car (a bright red Ford Escort that was the
most expensive vehicle I could afford on a City News salary) WAS my office.
IT
WAS IN those days that I developed a habit that I find I still have. I walk
into a strange place, and I find myself looking for a pay phone – in case I
have to call the office to report details for a possible story.
Even
though I now carry one of those Smartphone thingies, it seems so natural to
look for a phone, and I find myself disappointed at the lack of public
telephones.
But
that’s an issue for another day.
The
point being that back during my first year at City News when I was one of the
reporters who only briefly checked in with the main office in the morning, I
was among the people who hung out in the places most likely to result in crime
and criminal activity – which means stories.
KEEP
IN MIND that the old City News Bureau was the place that covered every single
homicide in Chicago and Cook County, and tried to keep up with the violent
activity in the rest of the Chicago area – back in the days when the homicide
total in Chicago could get ridiculously close to 1,000 per year.
City
News was also the entity that kept in daily contact with the Medical Examiner’s
office. I remember when I was the reporter who made the daily trip out to the
Near West Side every 5 a.m. – just to see if any of our countless other calls
throughout the day had managed to miss something.
This
is all scut work. As in the miniscule, often mind-numbing, activity that one
has to do in order to be able to stumble across the crime that becomes the
heart-warming tale of sadness.
While
also quickly learning that most homicides are droll enough that they’re rarely
worth more than three paragraphs. And for fear of sounding callous and crass,
many of the people whose slayings I wrote about 25 years ago were not pleasant
people.
THE
WORLD PROBABLY is, and has been, a more pleasant place without them.
If
there is a lesson I learned from those days, it is that man is incredibly
capable of being callous and cruel toward their fellow man. And under certain
circumstances, people can be made to do things they find to be repulsive and
would NEVER do otherwise.
But
the way you learn all of this is by doing the footwork – getting out into the
neighborhoods to see daily activity. Heck, there are some parts of Chicago that
I know primarily from having seen them when they were the site of a crime scene
a score and five years ago.
There’s
nothing new about any of this. You learn about the world by getting out and
seeing it.
WHAT
INSPIRED ME to write this particular commentary was the DNAInfo.com website,
which is including among its reporting an attempt to get at the reality of the
just over 200 murders that have occurred in Chicago this year.
They
literally have sent reporter-type people out to the homes of every single
victim – letting them get at details more than just what caliber firearm was
used.
It’s
nice. I’m sure they have many interesting stories as a result of their work.
And those youthful reporters are gaining some experiences that they will look
back on fondly later in life.
But
it’s nothing new. It sounds a lot like the dispatches that used to turn up in
newsrooms all across Chicago – many of which were used by the broadcasters and
newspapers of the city to determine which slayings were worth covering. Some things just never change.
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