In Praise of the Report
I'll get this out right now: needless to say, there's good cause to be pessimistic about the state of the Times. Even the most casual observer of Los Angeles media must, by now, be aware of that. There's the near-300 layoffs, the slow scaling back of book and theater coverage, the California Section's demise... It's redundant to into this stuff at depth, especially considering our own SoCal Connected, D.J. Waldie, and Erin Aubry Kaplanhave said all this with more grace and knowledge than I could ever hope to muster up. Regardless, though, it's worth mentioning the good stuff when it happens, to give credit where it's due and that's exactly what I intend to do here: I'm thankful—beyond thankful, actually—that the Homicide Report is back up and running. I don't care that Jill Leovy isn't running it anymore. She did a fantastic service to Los Angeles in starting it up but Ruben Vives did great work, too. I'm sure once Megan Garvey gets caught up on the last three months of downtime we'll see that she's just as capable as her predecessors.
Late one Friday night in May my girlfriend and I were watching a movie in our Long Beach apartment. It was around 11:30 when we heard a loud but distant pop not too far outside our house. The following conversation between the two us went something like this:
"What was that?"
"I don't know, a firework? But it's May. Why would somebody set off a firework in May? Maybe it was a gun."
"Whatever it was, I hope no one got hurt."
We found out the next day that the noise we heard probably wasn't a firework. In all likeliness, it was the shot that took the life of Jose Antonio Soto, 37. The details came to us from the Report:
According to Long Beach Police Department officials, Soto was standing on the sidewalk when a man approached and shot him. Soto was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Authorities described the gunman only as a man in his 40s or 50s. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Dets. Scott Lasch or Malcolm Evans at (562) 570-7244.
Reading that entry sent chills down my spine: that echo soaked clap we heard in the hot May night of course wasn't the firework, it was the end of a stranger's life. I'm not proud or happy to be doing it, but I'm asking us to count our blessings: yes, L.A. has lost a lot of precious things in these last few years, but we have a lot of things to be grateful about in seeing the Report come back. I've never written for the Times, and I can't read Eddy Hartenstein's or Sam Zell's respective minds but perhaps the thinking goes something like this: in reviving the Homicide Report the Times is using its newsroom's assets to provide a service I doubt any casual blogger could duplicate. The Report's up-to-date homicide demography combined with compelling, humanizing stories is unique and maybe a sign that the Times' might be transforming into a more relevant web entity?
As nice as that thought is, though, I should be realistic. I'm thankful we have the Report now but am also aware that in these times it could be done away with as soon as tomorrow. Call it cautious optimism; with a heavy emphasis on the cautious part.