Shot in the Dark

Journalism Today

When Jim Smorada was teaching me how to write the news, he taught the same cliche every other journo student and cub reporter gets:  do the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story.

So I caught this yesterday:

And I thought – maybe it’s just the social media intern doing a terrible job of clubbing and burying the lede?

So I looked into the story proper:

Brooklyn Park Police said a crowd gathered for a cultural event had to be dispersed Saturday evening due to people trying to force their way into a stadium.

According to police, officers were working at Park Center Senior High on Brooklyn Boulevard, where a cultural event was taking place.

Police said a crowd had gathered outside the event, which then began to try and force their way into the school district’s facilities.

 

So let’s break it down:

Who:  A crowd, and “people”.  Who?  What people? 

What:  A “cultural event”.  What culture?  What event?

When: Saturday evening.  

Where:  Park Center High, in Brooklyn Park.   

Why: Uhh… 

How:  With…er, “force” apparently.   

And this is the Five – the  least PC-whipped of the local TV stations.  

(Hat tip to Bill Glahn, who had the same idea). 

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Mitch Berg

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Comments

9 responses to “Journalism Today”

  1. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Who:

    Police said the exterior crowd refused to leave on their own

    It was a crowd of exteriors.

  2. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Not to read between the lines, but I’m betting that the “cultural event”, was a bunch of Somalis that decided to get violent. Of course, telling the truth, ist verboten to the left wing propagandists in the media.

  3. John "Bigman" Jones Avatar
    John “Bigman” Jones

    Was it a crowd of “exteriors” or “posteriors” who were acting like as*es?

  4. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    I saw the same report on Crime Watch Mpls with the same lack of information. CWM is always forthright as far as I know, so I think the real culprit here was the BP police.

  5. SmithStCrx Avatar
    SmithStCrx

    IIRC, several police departments in the Twin Cities have publicly acknowledged that if the suspect is a minority they will not include that detail unless it will help identify the individual that remains at large, but they will include the suspects race if he’s white.
    It leads to pretty funny situations when the news is reporting on an arrest and they’ll read the description sans race and put up a picture of a black gang banger.

  6. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    OK, the police will not identify the minority “unless it will help identify the individual”. So apparently, there are some cases where identifying whether a suspect is visibly black, asian, hispanic, white, whatever will not help apprehend them? Limiting the suspect pool to x% of the population will not clarify things a bit?

    I can’t think of any crimes where this would be the case. So what they’re telling us is that unless they’re really forced to, they’re not going to tell. And so we are all left assuming that the problems result from meetings of the “Sons of Oslo” or something.

  7. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    BTW, side note; Tom Lehrer died Saturday. Take a bag of peanuts to the local park and sing a song in his honor.

  8. ArthurRadley Avatar
    ArthurRadley

    Sammis crashed a Liberian Independence Day party.

  9. Mr. D Avatar
    Mr. D

    Sammis crashed a Liberian Independence Day party.

    That would make sense – there was a big Liberia Independence Day gathering and parade near the Brookdale Library on Saturday afternoon and I believe that once the parade was over, the Liberian crowd was headed that way for additional festivities.

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