It cracks me up when the assigned reporter covering New Smyrna Beach for the "Daytona Beach" News-Journal takes a holier-than-thou attitude about life in the projects. The riveting headline "Murder puts New Smyrna Neighbors on Edge" is laughable, if not pathetic.
New Smyrna neighbors on edge. Really?
Let's be clear about this. Where does the reporter get his information? Where else do News-Journal reporters get their information? Either through prepared press releases that reporters put their byline on or by covering government meetings and regurgitating agendas.
In this case, the reporter creates a scenario where tyranny reigns and the cops have a real battle on their hands. The source of this? A single resident at a housing authority concerned about her child.
All parents should be concerned about the safety of their children and most are, even in the projects. But to read this story, one would think it's the 1977 blackout of New York City with violent gangs pillaging and shooting the place up.
There was a murder in the projects two weeks ago. Of course, the reporter wouldn't have even the foggiest idea there was such a problem, even if one does exist, had he not gone to this all-important meeting.
Let's be real here! The lone resident quoted in the story was the next-door apartment neighbor to the shooting. Of course she'd be scared. But the community as a whole in fear? Where's your evidence News-Journal?
Get real!
Hey, News-Journal? Why not do what real news organizations do and actually send your reporter to the source of concern, in this case, the projects? Talk to real people and get crime statistics, take photos and show the readers whether rolling gangs of gun-toting thugs are out there selling drugs to kids and having sex with their mothers.
Back in the day, say a decade ago when the News-Journal was a real metro newspaper, we did such reporting, not the drivel of your Tuesday opus, ""Murder puts New Smyrna Neighbors on Edge."
In 1997, in the second year of my 8 1/2-year run with the News-Journal, I was the recipient of the Florida Society of Professional Journalists' "James K. Batten Award for Public Service" for my week-long series on West Volusia's "Spring Hill."
The series was well-sourced with comments from dozens of residents, community leaders, police and national experts on crime, poverty and other ills. The series did not sugarcoat the problems, but put things in perspective, dispelling myths and sterotypes. The greater community got involved and federal monies were generated to help make a difference.
That's what real reporters do, encouraged and reinforced by real newspapers.
But like everything else, that would actually take real work rather than sitting at a meeting and regurgitating a few soundbites or rewriting those daily press releases.
This is the new normal of the News-Journal, which is why NSBNEWS.net is New Smyrna Beach's real daily news source. For the record, NSBNEWS.net was first with the breaking news on the homicide.
All this so-called news story in Tuesday's News-Journal does is reinforce stereotypes that the projects are crime-infested hell holes that are home to violent and nasty people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Hey, News-Journal: It's called poverty. Aside from this isolated shooting, crime is no worse here than in any other part of the city.
Perhaps you ought to focus on your own impoverished communities in Daytona Beach, which you ignore until there's a shooting; then the fear-mongering reporting comes to the surface.