Last week’s editions of The Courier-Journal carried two major and important local stories whose effect on readers was intensified by powerful visual images that were as much a part of the stories as the words that told them.
Frenetic and jubilant pictures helped chronicle the University of Louisville Cardinals’ wild and woolly march to the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament in St. Louis.
Grief-laden photographs were crucial to illustrating the depth and breadth of sadness that tore at both a family and a community, and support that perhaps bolstered them, too, upon the funeral of Louisville Metro Police Officer Peter Grignon, who was killed in the line of duty on March 23.
While I heard nothing good or bad about the sports photos (which I thought were terrific), several readers contacted the newspaper to voice their concern, even anger, over the pictures The Courier printed of the grieving family members of Officer Grignon and Travis Ballard, the teen-ager who police say shot the officer before killing himself.
At the heart of their comments: Why do you take these pictures and print them?
Good question. And I’ll get to the answers, and some perhaps surprising comments, in a moment. But first a summary of the coverage:
On page A11 of the March 24 edition, the newspaper printed a photograph of the distraught parents of Ballard, taken after they had identified the body of their son at the crime scene. The picture accompanied a story that started on the front page, in which the parents gave interviews about Travis to a Courier reporter.
A few days after Peter Grignon’s death, his family agreed to meet with a Courier reporter to talk about Peter, and about what made him so special to them and to the community. Their picture was taken during that session, and the story and photograph ran on page A1 on March 26.
Both families shared personal photographs to accompany the news stories.
The newspaper reported on Ballard’s funeral in the March 27 issue, with a short story and one photograph of an attendee, which appeared on an inside page.
When almost 3,000 people showed up for the funeral of Grignon, the news media were there, too. On the March 29 front page, The Courier printed a photograph of the slain officer’s mother and mother-in-law comforting his visibly upset widow. Inside the same issue were two pages of photographs and stories.
Courier-Journal managing editor Ben Post said the newspaper’s intention was to cover this very public, very tragic news event in the most tasteful and compassionate way possible.
“We try to be sensitive about intruding on people’s sense of privacy,” Post said. “At the same time, it’s important to show how a sad situation affects people’s lives.”
So, photos were reviewed to try to choose those that reflected the grief on all sides of the tragedy “without overdoing it,” he said.
And this was a major news story that was about personal tragedy and grief and more: It also was about community tragedy and grief, Post said.
Given the concerns raised by the readers who contacted The Courier, I called and spoke with Donald Grignon, Peter Grignon’s father, about the coverage.
He said the family felt an obligation to Peter and to the public to shine a light on him as a boy, a man, a husband, a son and a brother.
“We knew at some point we wanted to share that with everyone,” Donald Grignon said.
“We are very private people, like Peter was. We hope we were gracious in declining comment until we were ready.”
And when they were ready, Donald said, Peter’s widow, Rebecca, was the first to say yes to a newspaper interview. Several family members participated in that session.
What about the photos, taken that day and later at the funeral?
“We’re the people we are, and the photographs showed that,” he said.
“The fact that that photo (of the women grieving) was on the front page doesn’t bother any of us at all.”
Although “none of us wanted to be in the forefront,” he said, it was their desire to honor Peter that motivated them to be there.
For the record, my attempts to reach Travis Ballard’s parents for their comments were unsuccessful.
Different issue, different calls.
The back page of the main news section in the Easter Sunday edition of The Courier-Journal carried a full-page graphic with the bold headlines, “The promise in the manger, fulfilled in an empty tomb. He is risen!”
I heard from readers who were puzzled by the page — was it news or was it advertising? — and troubled that there was no designation on the page. Were they to assume it was an editorial/news message to readers?
It was an advertisement, but the purchaser’s information had been inadvertently dropped from the page that appeared in the paper on Easter Sunday, said Abby Clark, head of the newspaper’s advertising department.
That’s not the way the ad should have appeared.
Last Wednesday, the ad was printed as it should have been the first time: It was labeled an advertisement at the top of the page, and the bottom of the ad carried the purchaser’s information — Hobby Lobby & Mardel Stores.
