“I am very appalled at the front page of your paper today, how you would put a crackhead family on the whole top of the paper plus two full pages, and the poor policeman and his family, a little 4 x 5 picture. I couldnt believe it.”
The caller, who said she lives near and is friendly with several police officers, was clearly upset when she called last Sunday. And she wasn’t alone.
We heard from other readers who complained about Sunday’s front page: The entire space above the fold and some spillover was devoted to a story (“A family addiction”) about a family with a history of drug addiction. Below, was a news feature (“He was living his dream”) about Stanley Cornell Reaves, a Norfolk officer gunned down two days earlier in Norfolk’s Park Place community, and the case’s investigation.
“The police officer is more important than those drug addicts,” shouted an angry caller who slammed her phone down before I could get a word in.
“Am I supposed to feel sorry” for the family of addicts? asked Maureen Johnakin, who said The Pilot should have used the space for a photo of the shooting suspect, who has since been captured.
Not that the story of the troubled family didn’t deserve attention, some said. “It was a worthy story, a story worth telling,” said Nelson White, a Park Place activist. “But to lose someone we could call a hero, his story should have been on the top fold.”
Some readers viewed the family’s story as a racial slap (“I will not spend my money to have my race trashed,” said one caller), while others saw the family’s drug/crime behavior as typically black.
That’s a lot of complaint baggage for one story. But I, too, was surprised that the “family addiction” story took more than the top half of the front page while Reaves story was relegated to the bottom. That ain’t right, I thought. The stories could have been reversed. Better yet, the family’s story could have been held.
I asked Maria Carrillo, The Pilot’s new managing editor, about that.
“Why not reverse the play, with the officer’s story above and the [family's story] below?” Carrillo asked. “My thinking: The shooting story had been six-column, front-page news the day before, as we felt it deserved and as weve done in the past when a police officer has been killed in the line of duty.
“Sunday’s [Reaves'] story had no breaking new element, but did give us some insight into who the officer was, from one friends perspective,” Carrillo added. She said that she felt “it got a nice treatment out front, and I also was committed to giving our project one we had worked months on the right footprint.”
Couldnt it have held?
Of course, Carrillo said. But “we did want to get it in the paper, however, because we have a full schedule of projects coming up, as well as the election. And there was the expectation and it has played out that the officers shooting would continue to make front-page news.”
I wouldn’t have downplayed (positionally speaking) the Sunday Reaves story. No new news or not, it would have been above the fold. Editors should have been more sensitive to what message not doing so might send at a time when the community is grieving over the second tragic slaying of an area police officer in a three-week period.
Still, I can appreciate Carrillo’s reasoning. Especially the part about the likelihood of the slain officer’s story being a continued front-page presence.
It has been that, but our treatment hasn’t escaped criticism. Thursday’s front-page package was dominated by the capture of Thomas Alexander Porter, in White Plains, N.Y. and his arrest in the Reaves slaying.
“Once again, the hero is upstaged by the criminal!” e-mailed Amanda Norris of Virginia Beach.
The Pilot’s front-page treatment Thursday was superb. The capture of the suspect WAS the main story, thus the banner headline “Bar fight report led to arrest.” But staff photographer Bill Tiernans large, touching photo of Reaves’ widow, Treva, and his 1-year-old son, Ryan, standing before Reaves’ casket with a Norfolk police officer, along with a small photo of Reaves, gave the funeral a strong front-page presence.
A few comments about the “family addiction” story.
It was the result of months of extensive interviews and research by staff writer John-Henry Doucette. Springing from the trial and sentencing of a 17-year-old high school dropout in an attempted convenience store robbery, the story calls to mind “Rosas Story,” the award-winning story by former Washington Post reporter Leon Dash that became a book and a TV documentary. Doucette’s story told of how drugs had ravaged generations of a Portsmouth family.
“We undertook this story, Carrillo said, “to illustrate on a deeper level what we see play out frequently in every local courthouse: how people who commit crimes are sometimes shaped by their circumstances and how that ultimately has consequences for innocent victims.”
