The private tragedy of Jessie Davis grabbed the attention of the region and then the nation with startling speed and intensity.
Davis, the pregnant Stark County mother whose disappearance gripped the emotions of so many Northeast Ohioans, became national news for days until her body was discovered last Saturday in a park near Blossom Music Center. People immediately opened their hearts to her and her 2-year-old son. Thousands searched for her. People who had never heard of her 10 days earlier wept when they learned of her death.
No doubt it was this instant connection with Davis that led some readers to react with outrage at what they believed was an insensitive story about her that appeared in last Sunday’s Plain Dealer.
Reports of the search and investigation had dominated the front page all week, and while they had included lots of peripheral details about her, none had given readers a good look at Jessie Davis, the person. So reporter Laura Johnston was dispatched to do that story.
After interviewing friends, family, co-workers and others, Johnston delivered a story about a fun-loving, popular young woman with an infectious laugh, a talent for cooking, an instinct for motherhood and a compassion for others. The story also told of some hard times in her life: a bankruptcy, a DUI, her parents’ difficult divorce.
It was those last details that aroused readers’ ire.
“Do you not have a heart or any decency as a human being?” demanded one of the dozens of readers who wrote or called Johnston and others at the paper.
“Hasn’t the family suffered enough?” asked another.
“You exploited the dead, which is a shameful thing to do,” charged a third.
I thought it was an insightful story, filled with an outpouring of love from Davis’ friends, along with flaws that reflected her humanity. Portraying an idealized version of Jessie Davis would have been dishonest and unworthy. Even so, I wasn’t stunned at the reaction.
People are complex. Any worthwhile profile of someone in the news is going to include all sides, good and bad. But when the profile is in the form of an obituary, or a story about someone who has died, relatives and friends who loved that person often react with anger. In this case, that defensive reaction spread to many strangers who had formed a bond with her through the news coverage.
The timing was unfortunate, because the story appeared on the same day we reported the news that her body had been found. But editors decided to publish the story as planned, and I think that was the right call. I liked Jessie Davis better after I read it, and I’m guessing most of our readers did, too.
Editor Susan Goldberg summed it up like this:
“Reporting the flaws of people we want to think the best about, or who are otherwise sympathetic characters, can make for uncomfortable reading – to say nothing of difficult reporting,” she said. “But to pretend someone had a perfect life is both untrue and insulting to the complexities that most of us deal with in our lives. Our job is to tell it like it is. With sensitivity, caring and balance, yes. But like it is.”
The paper’s coverage raised other questions as well:
The Ravenna parallel.
The Friday before Davis’ body was found, we ran a story about a case seven years ago in which a Ravenna woman, nine months pregnant, went missing and was later found to have been murdered by a woman who took the baby as her own. A reader wrote in anger, charging sensationalism and a disregard for Davis’ family.
But it probably would be difficult to find someone who had been in Northeast Ohio in 2000 who did not immediately think of the Ravenna case upon hearing about Davis’ disappearance. Recapping the facts of that case and giving readers an update was an obvious and responsible thing to do.
The Nikki Giavasis story.
She is the model who had had a child with Bobby Cutts, the father of Davis’ son who has been accused in her killing, and another with former Cavaliers player Shawn Kemp. We ran a story about her last Saturday, playing it above the nameplate on Page One. “Deplorable” choice of subject and play, wrote one of several readers who objected.
Giavasis, obviously not a key figure in the disappearance of Jessie Davis, was nonetheless an interesting character in the background, and it was right to satisfy readers’ curiosity about her. But I’d agree with readers who thought putting her at the top of Page One – or even on Page One at all – was over the top.
What happened to the Medical Mart story?
The centerpiece story on Page One last Sunday was supposed to be reporter Sarah Hollander’s in-depth look at the proposed Cleveland Medical Mart project. Readers had been told to look for it in a short item that ran with a related story the previous week, and the lead editorial in Sunday’s Forum section referred to it.
However, on Saturday afternoon, with the story already laid out on the page, editors learned that Jessie Davis’ body had been found. They decided to tear up the front page, hold the Medical Mart story for later, and devote that space to the breaking news.
No argument about that here – breaking news almost always trumps anything else. But we should have let readers know what had happened. The editorial was in a section that had already been printed Saturday morning, but a short explanation on Page One could have kept people from tearing apart the Sunday paper looking for a story that wasn’t there.
The Medical Mart story finally ran on Wednesday – still without an explanation. We owed you one.
