Covering Child Murders p;

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Three Midwestern metro newspapers have intensified their
coverage in order to spotlight this new wave of urban violence sp.


REACTING TO A horrifying new direction in urban violence, three big Midwestern newspapers are changing the way they cover the murders of children.
The Detroit Free Press, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune have launched separate crusades to spotlight the toll that violence ? in the home as well as on the streets ? is taking on youngsters in their communities.
Two of the papers, the Free Press and the Sun-Times, have also served notice that they are intentionally blurring the line between journalism and activism in order to help children.
"I think it is a time when we have to break journalistic rules and lead," Sun-Times editor Dennis Britton said. "No one else has been doing anything."
"We basically decided [at the Free Press] that some people aren't going to like it and some people are going to think we crossed the line.
"But while we'll acknowledge that viewpoint, we've got to do it anyway," said Jane Daugherty, who directs coverage of the Free Press' new "Children First" campaign.
"If somebody wants to argue about the interests of children, well, we'll argue with them," Daugherty added.
Editors at all three papers have made public vows to cover the violent deaths of children more intensely than they ever have.
"During the next year, the Tribune will not let the murder of a single child in our metropolitan area go unnoticed," editor Jack Fuller wrote in a front-page notice when 1993 was just three days old ? and a 14-year-old girl had already been shot to death.
"[The Tribune] will document every one, both to accord the loss of each young life the significance it deserves and to see if detailed knowledge can bring an end to the escalation of violence against those we all have the greatest duty to protect," he wrote.
Three months earlier, on Oct. 15, Sun-Times editor Britton also took to the front page, with an unusual full-page editorial about the death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, killed by a sniper as he walked to school with his mother in the notorious Cabrini-Green housing project.
"Dantrell Davis was our child, Chicago. We let him down. Please don't let this be someone else's problem. It's yours. It's mine. Let's together retake our city," Britton wrote.
In the months that followed, the Sun-Times has published numerous stories ? many under the subhead "Dantrell's Legacy" ? on all aspects of the growing culture of violence ensnaring Chicago-area children.
In Chicago and Detroit, staggering numbers of children die violently: Last year, 43 kids under 17 were murdered in Detroit; 96 children aged 16 and under were murdered in Chicago.
The murder rates are just the most extreme manifestations of what, in some cities, is a virtual pandemic of traumatizing child violence.
In Detroit, the Free Press says, one of every five children has actually seen someone die violently. Last year, the schools confiscated 194 guns.
Probably the most ambitious newspaper effort confronting this issue is the Free Press' Children First campaign.
Already, the campaign has dramatically transformed the way the Free Press approaches stories about children and violence.
One immediately noticeable change: Every breaking story about a child's violent death also includes information about "what should have been done to prevent this situation," said Daugherty.
"There will be a sidebar on things like how to get help if you know of an [abuse] situation, or about agencies that offer conflict resolution training or crack [cocaine abuse] help lines," she said.
The change, Free Press publisher Neal Shine said, was prompted by complaints that the newspapers loaded readers down with gruesome and depressing details of these true-life horror stories, but never suggested what readers were supposed to do about these situations.
"They told us, 'You're the scorekeeper. You come up with all the numbers, mostly telling us we're losing, but you don't spend much time telling us how we can win,' " Shine said.
"We decided," he added, "we were going to continue to keep score ? but we also are going to get into the game."
Getting into the game has taken the five-person Children First staff into areas well outside traditional journalism.
Beyond simply highlighting agencies in stories and features, the newspaper is creating a database to match troubled people or volunteers directly with organizations that can help.
Several individual lawyers, and one entire law firm staff, have volunteered to create a Children First legal advocacy group, Shine said.
Michigan legislators have called the paper asking what new laws are needed, and Free Press journalists might just help them draw up legislation, Shine said.
"We see it as another avenue and, of course, we also see it as another minefield for journalists," Shine said.
However, it is time for action, the publisher added.
"We [journalists] are always 'pointing with pride' or 'viewing with alarm' ? but we don't get involved. I must tell you I am as excited about this as anything I've ever been involved with in 33 years here," Shine said.
Britton said his paper launched its own crusade for similar reasons.
"I am personally disgusted with our political leadership and our religious leadership in not leading in this area," Britton said.
Most troubling, Britton said, was how jaded people had become about violence against children, especially when it happens in inner cities.
Even the Sun-Times fell victim to that, Britton said.
"There was a 45-minute shoot-out in the Stateway Gardens projects [in October] and the Sun-Times, which prides itself on covering the city better than any other news organization, carried not a word about it the next day," he said.
When little Dantrell Davis was shot dead, Britton said, "I waited 24 hours for a reaction from the community, like the mayor or somebody" before writing the front-page editorial.
In addition to intensified coverage of violence, however, the paper has also expanded reporting about the possible causes of violence.
Recently, for example, it presented the results of what Britton calls the "largest public attitude survey ever taken in Chicago."
The resulting series, "The Great Divide," documented the extent of racial polarization in a city often called, unfairly or not, America's most segregated.
A three-person reporting team has been formed from that effort to continue coverage of multicultural affairs in the metropolitan area, Britton said.
"We are going to find programs that are working and write about them. We are going to find programs that are not working and write about them, too. We are going to write about the heroes and expose the grandstanders," he said.
"I think it is time to have solution journalism," Britton said.
At the Chicago Tribune, editor Fuller said his paper is not ready yet to throw out the traditional limits of journalism, even as it makes a special effort to focus on violence against children.
"We're not changing the fundamental role of the newspaper . . . [or] trying to redefine what we do," Fuller said.
Fuller noted that the newspaper for a very long time has contributed to social services and charities through its philanthropic arms, the Chicago Tribune Holiday Fund and the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.
"I don't think there is such a severe leadership gap that nobody but the newspaper can do anything about the situation. I haven't come to that conclusion," he added.
"I know the notion that a newspaper should become engaged with the community in a way beyond the printing press is an intriguing one to many [journalists]. But I still think the printing press is what we do best, and it is still powerful if it's handled right," Fuller concluded.
Nevertheless, the campaign has already challenged ? and changed ? some of the rules that long governed reporting on violence.
For one thing, the Tribune is now naming gang affiliations, a longtime taboo for all Chicago dailies.
"We were always fairly reluctant [to name gangs], being told that it glamorized and encouraged gang activity," Fuller said. "Basically, we have concluded that it [the policy] hadn't made any difference. Certainly it has not dampened down gang activity in the slightest."
One striking difference in coverage could be seen in a recent front-page story about the release from prison of a Vice Lord gang leader.
The story detailed a sickening gangland tableau: the arrogant "leader," the grinning acolytes, the caravan of limousines ready to bring the criminal back to the streets of Chicago.
It was a story guaranteed to raise blood pressures throughout the metropolitan area.
"In the past, we never would have done a story like that. We're going to talk about what's really happening," Fuller said.
The Tribune decision to detail the lives of all children who die violently ? not just those who die in gang drive-by shootings, but in the more common beatings or fatal shakings by angry parents ? can be traced, like the Sun-Times campaign, to the Dantrell Davis shooting.
Fuller says he was also thinking of a girl killed a little earlier, whose futile death was captured in an almost despairing lead paragraph.
"The lead was something like, 'tomorrow you won't remember her name,' " Fuller recalled. "And it was very poignant. And it touched me. And of course [the lead] was right."