Child dies in household accident

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:59 am

HINSDALE -- A 2-year-old Hinsdale boy found by his father under an overturned dresser apparently died of asphyxiation, according to preliminary results of an autopsy performed Sunday, officials said.Jay Tribbey found his son, Joshua, at about 3:40 p.m. Saturday in their home in the 800 block of Hickory Street and called 911, authorities said."What we do know for sure is that the boy was found under the dresser by his father," said Matt Shane, DuPage County deputy coroner. "The trauma was due to the dresser."Police and Fire Department officials in Hinsdale said paramedics responded to a report of a child having difficulty breathing. The boy was taken to Hinsdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later. (Chicago Tribune)***Sad, yes. News? No.***

Rio · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 3:56 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
***Sad, yes. News? No.***<hr></blockquote>Wait a minute. A 2-year-old dies after he was found with an overturned dresser on top of him, and you don't think this is news??Would you care to explain your reasoning on this, Phil?[ January 14, 2003: Message edited by: Gary Kirchherr ]

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 4:09 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Gary Kirchherr:
Wait a minute. A 2-year-old dies after he was found with an overturned dresser on top of him, and you don't think this is news??Would you care to explain your reasoning on this, Phil?<hr></blockquote>Explanation is hardly necessary. Absent any foul play (and none is suggested), it's just an unfortunate happenstance, no more newsworthy than if someone dies after falling down the stairs.[ January 14, 2003: Message edited by: blanp ]

Emily Salmon · **Joined:** Sat Nov 16, 2002 1:01 am **Posts:** 86

I see both your sides--I say the story wasn't written/edited well enough and poses a lot of questions. Why was the father's story believed? Are the police continuing to question him? If not, why was he not a suspect? What was he doing at the time of the child's death?
Stories that don't answer the reader's obvious questions really irk me.

Rio · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 2:38 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Emily Salmon:
I see both your sides. ... Stories that don't answer the reader's obvious questions really irk me.<hr></blockquote>Agreed.

Guest · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 3:26 pm

I'm with blanp on this one. Unless there's a police investigation into suspicious or mitigating causes of death, it's a non-story and a cruel intrusion on a family's privacy and grief.This comes up every once in a while when there's a suicide in our coverage area. If there person isn't a public figure and doesn't kill him- or herself in a public area, it's not news, as I see it. Even if it's done with a gun or in some other spectacularly shocking manner. But we seem to have people where I work who want to debate that every time something like that happens ... especially when it's a kid.

rumymommy · **Joined:** Tue Aug 06, 2002 12:01 am **Posts:** 138

News, no. But if nothing else, it will make a handful of parents paranoid to let their kids around dressers.

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

Sure, it's news. Not huge news, but worth a story. Since when is a tragedy like this not news? Evidence of foul-play is not needed to make this worth pursuing.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 10:47 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by dasher:
Sure, it's news. Not huge news, but worth a story. Since when is a tragedy like this not news? Evidence of foul-play is not needed to make this worth pursuing.<hr></blockquote>So it's news if some guy falls down the stairs and kills himself?

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

Sure, it's news. Not huge news, but worth a story. Since when is a tragedy like this not news? Evidence of foul-play is not needed to make this worth pursuing.

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

Sure, it's news. Not huge news, but worth a story. Since when is a tragedy like this not news? Evidence of foul-play is not needed to make this worth pursuing.

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
So it's news if some guy falls down the stairs and kills himself?<hr></blockquote>That's a different set of facts, wouldn't you agree?And, it might be news ... on a slow day :)[ January 14, 2003: Message edited by: dasher ]

Guest · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 11:04 pm

It's not enough to say "it's news." The question has been posited, and thus remains: Just what justifies it as a news story? What elemental threshhold does it meet for public domain?

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 11:17 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by dasher:
That's a different set of facts, wouldn't you agree?<hr></blockquote>I would say they are roughtly equivalent. And if I didn't know better, I'd say you are being deliberately provocative.

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
I would say they are roughtly equivalent. And if I didn't know better, I'd say you are being deliberately provocative.<hr></blockquote> Just trying to keep the conversation lively! :)

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Jim Thomsen:
It's not enough to say "it's news." The question has been posited, and thus remains: Just what justifies it as a news story? What elemental threshhold does it meet for public domain?<hr></blockquote> The death of a young child under such unusual and tragic circumstances triggers an emotional response in readers, and thus makes it news worth reading. Every parent lives in fear that something in the house is going to cause their children harm. Something like this just breaks your heart. So, I guess, that's my threshold. To me, not every accident requires a police inquiry to make it newsworthy. (Foul play, clearly, would make it an even bigger story.) I hope this better explains my point.

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:08 am

It's not news.Repeat: IT'S NOT NEWS.And it's not because I am some unfeeling asshole who hates kids (I have five of them). It's just not a newsworthy event.All publishing this stupid story does is add to a family's grief.

Dyslexic · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:13 am

I don't work in the news indudustry, so perhaps someone can clarify something for me. My understanding is that the job of newspapers is to report to the public that which it has a right to know. How do I have a right to know about the personal tragedy of this family?

jbm · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:20 am

Perhaps if this accident was reported in the context of a larger story -- i.e. this type of furniture can be dangerous. Then it would be useful. But that's not the case here. It's not useful, it's not news.

Rio · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:22 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by dasher:
The death of a young child under such unusual and tragic circumstances triggers an emotional response in readers, and thus makes it news worth reading. Every parent lives in fear that something in the house is going to cause their children harm. Something like this just breaks your heart. So, I guess, that's my threshold. To me, not every accident requires a police inquiry to make it newsworthy. (Foul play, clearly, would make it an even bigger story.) I hope this better explains my point.<hr></blockquote>It does. Thank you for articulating it so well, thereby saving me the trouble.Of the countless discussions I've read on this board and the Yahoo club that preceded it, this one surprises me the most. I can understand arguments over using "begging the question" and "reverse discrimination," but I assumed the news value of this story is self-evident. I guess I have to learn not to take so much for granted.I still don't understand blanp's and Thomsen's reasoning one iota. Don't your guys' respective newspapers report deaths from auto accidents? If four teenagers get killed in an auto accident, or a middle-aged high school principal drops dead while jogging, do we write this off as just an "unfortunate happenstance" and forget it?Does a death have to be the result of foul play before you guys will consider it news?

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:49 am

No, a death does not have to be the result of "foul play" to be newsworthy. But it has to have some public "impact." A car wreck that kills four people qualifies. A principal who keels over while jogging may or may not, depending on his "profile in the community" and, of course, the newspaper. I might expect to see the principal in the Montgomery Journal. I would be surprised to see it in the Washington Post, although I should know by now never to be surprised by anything.
And Dasher knows full well that it is not our job to play to "every parent's worst nightmare." That is the way of sensationalism, and I reject that. As sad as the child's death was, it really wasn't anyone's business because there is no public "impact." Despite what a Sun-Times columnist says, it takes a lot more than being "interesting" to make a news story ... and a dresser falling over on a child isn't even "interesting."[ January 15, 2003: Message edited by: blanp ]

Powderhorn · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 4:38 am

First off, the newsworthiness (or lack thereof) of this story heavily depends on the coverage area of the paper in question. For The Chicago Tribune, as is the source for this story, I fail to believe this is news. In any metro area, people are going to die by accident (if even a freak accident, as this certainly seems to qualify to be) -- but one can't reasonably expect more than a passing note in the police blotter. In Harrisonburg (or, ostensibly, Charlottesville, though I haven't been here long enough to gauge it), this story would merit A1.Regardless, I agree that if this were part of an epidemic of children being crushed by dressers, it would be newsworthy, but only if the story mentioned the frequency with which such accidents occured.This seems like one of those pull-at-your-heartstrings-to-make-the-paper-seem-caring stories, and I don't care for those at all.

Guest · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 3:42 pm

To me, the dividing line is simple: The dresser incident happened at home, behind closed and private doors, to people who were not public figures before the incident (that I know of, anyway). There was no police investigation (that I know of, anyway). This is a private tragedy, the polar opposite of public interest. You can't put it in the same category as an auto accident, which happens in public and affects traffic, affects the safety of other drivers and pedestrians, etc.And making the family in the dresser story public figures by arbitrary decision of an editor seems cruel ... it opens the door to all sorts of future intrusiveness by the media, which can legally justify it by saying, "Hey, they're public figures, so ... tough."

dmfugitive · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 6:19 pm

If a 2-year-old choked to death on a piece of food that hadn't been cut small enough, I doubt you'd put it in the paper. If a 2-year-old died of some sort of heart defect that might have been detected and prevented if the child had had the right test, I doubt that would make it into the paper, either. Perhaps these tragedies happen often enough that we can't present them as cautionary tales and still keep a straight face. There's a school of thought that says anything emotional is newsworthy. If a child falls dead across your morbid-curiosity threshold, don't be coy about it and dress up the story as some kind of service journalism.

Guest · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 7:03 pm

There's a school of thought that says anything emotional is newsworthy.Maybe we should send reporters to cover weekend church services, funerals, bar mitzvahs, weddings, AA meetings ... and write 60-inch narrative epics about our relationship breakups ....As a purely perverse sociological experiment, I;d be interested to see how "news" like that would affect single-copy sales over, say, a three-month sampling.

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 7:32 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Jim Thomsen:
[b]There's a school of thought that says anything emotional is newsworthy.Maybe we should send reporters to cover weekend church services, funerals, bar mitzvahs, weddings, AA meetings ... and write 60-inch narrative epics about our relationship breakups ....As a purely perverse sociological experiment, I;d be interested to see how "news" like that would affect single-copy sales over, say, a three-month sampling.[/b]<hr></blockquote>would probably help sales. not that i'm advocating it.

gullyj · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 8:55 pm

During the new year's week a young child died in the basement of his home by hanging. Police said it was accidental. I resisted some pressure at Toronto Star to have it covered and won out.The tabloid Toronto Sun splashed it across page 2 and 3 with plenty of photos of the house and ambulance in front of the house. A week later, a heartfelt tribute to the child's life was published in the "Lives Lived" column of the Globe and Mail. It was written by his adopted father, an editor at the Globe and Mail.To each his own.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 9:14 pm

The only thing more ghastly than a newspaper editor writing about his children is a newspaper editor writing about his dead children. This sort of thing happens frequently, probably because softhearted editors don't have it in them to say, "No."Don't write about your children in the newspaper.

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

[QUOTE]Originally posted by canuck:
[QB]During the new year's week a young child died in the basement of his home by hanging. Police said it was accidental. I resisted some pressure at Toronto Star to have it covered and won out.The tabloid Toronto Sun splashed it across page 2 and 3 with plenty of photos of the house and ambulance in front of the house. I could get in trouble here, but I think this is what makes multiple-newspaper towns so great. I think you can make a strong argument for either decision ... and then let the reader decide. If you like to read certain stories, you buy one paper ... if you like other stories, buy the other paper ... if you like all stories, buy both!

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 10:13 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by dasher:
[QUOTE][QB]I think you can make a strong argument for either decision ... and then let the reader decide. <hr></blockquote>To demand that the "reader decide" is to demand too much time from him. We are editors. We decide what the news is (or, editors above us). I wouldn't want a news decision made based on what one editor thinks another might do (and I saw very little of that in Chicago, although I aware that things are different on both sides of Michigan Avenue these days).[ January 15, 2003: Message edited by: blanp ]

dasher · **Joined:** Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:01 am **Posts:** 26

Shouldn't part of the news decision-making process be based on what you believe your readers want to read about? And I don't see anything wrong with trying to anticipate what the competition is going to do and providing something different. (This doesn't apply in all cases. You never want to do this and risk blowing an important story, but that's probably painfully obvious.)

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jan 15, 2003 10:58 pm

I naively assume that the readers want to read "news" in the news pages. I and others like me, above and below, spend our careers learning what "news" is. Some learn it better than others.

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