The mass shooting in Alabama that the country never heard about

If you don't live on the Gulf Coast, chances are you never heard about a violent incident last weekend.

One week ago tonight, a mass shooting occurred in Mobile, Alabama's Ladd-Peebles Stadium. A 17-year old shot nine people, critically injuring several of them. The victims were all between the ages of 15 and 18 and were at the stadium just to see a high school football game. Thankfully, all of the victims survived and police have the alleged shooter in custody.

The local media grimly and responsibly covered the story.

The national media ignored it.

WALA, WKRG, WPMI and al.com all led their morning news with accounts of the crime along with statements from Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste and the Mobile County Public School System.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News didn't have a peep about it on their morning broadcasts. A few major dailies like the NY Times and Washington Post mentioned it well 'below the fold' on their websites. The usually reliably hysterical Drudge Report was silent.

So, why the hush-hush, mainstream media? Why wasn't there at least 24 hours of gun-grabbers and leftwing nutballs bashing the NRA, trashing Mitch McConnell and railing against President Donald Trump for promoting the evil of the Second Amendment?

Could it be because the alleged shooter wasn't a mentally ill white guy? Wasn't it because this storyline doesn't fit the narrative of the blatant race-baiting culture of today's mass media?

Of course it was.

The alleged shooter is 17-year old Deangelo Parnell. Police say it was this troubled young black male who shot and wounded nine other black teens, thankfully killing none.

He is being charged with nine counts of attempted murder. Although he is only 17, he is being charged as an adult and is being held at Mobile County Metro Jail on $540,000 bond ($60,000 per count).

If Parnell had been a sick middle-aged white guy dealing attempted murder with an AR-15, we would still be hearing all about it. Beto O'Rourke would be at Ladd-Peebles dropping F-bombs. David Hogg would be at University Hospital talking about how this was his eighth time surviving gun nuts attempts to rub him out. There would be daily marches through the streets of Mobile, demanding immediate confiscation of guns from lawful U.S. citizens.

But since Parnell is a black youth and his victims look just like him, his alleged crime ranks only as a screen-crawl footnote. He just becomes another perpetrator of a crime trend that has become a national epidemic. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black males between the ages 15-34, says the CDC. We see it in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington DC. Now, we're seeing it in South Alabama.

That is ho-hum stuff to the national media. It's boring. People change channels when talking heads use CDC statistics and talk about hard subjects like black-on-black crime. Baltimore is a shithole for a reason, but the media won't talk about it. They think it hurts ratings and that is a real tragedy.

A white guy shooting a lot of people--some of whom are different from him--is something the media uses to divide us. A black guy shooting a lot of people--almost all of whom look like him--is something that the media can't bring themselves to talk about. There's no lever in the Parnell story to pry Americans apart.

The U.S. needs to have a national conversation about the root causes of violence in our communities. We need to talk about why a very small percentage of people contemplate hurting innocents and taking lives.

The U.S. also needs to have a national conversation about how much we let the national news media and popular culture influence our views of one another.

The fact that the national news ignored the shooting in Mobile tells you that they really don't care about your problems until your problems become something they can use against you.

The media needs us at each other's throats. They need us divided, angry, anxious and scared of each other.  That sells cars, legal services and Botox treatments.

The clash between college controlled content and social media reporting

College-controlled content collides with traditional media coverage

Published on National Sports Journalism Cente... | shared via feedly

Broadcast rights are one thing, but some in the media think it may be more about old-fashioned competition. Seattle Times sports editor Don Shelton told shermanreport.com his paper's relationship with the University of Washington as antagonistic and "it's not a partnership at all."

Washington employs its own writer who tweets on his own account during games and the school hosts live chats during the week – something a Seattle Times reporter was doing until the school said such activities infringed on its broadcast rights.

"We started doing live chats almost every day at noon and had beat reporters do it, and the University of Washington liked it, so they did it themselves then stopped the Seattle Times, [saying] it infringed on broadcasting rights," Shelton told shermanreport.com. "It's not a partnership at all; it's definitely an antagonistic relationship."

New media has redefined that relationship between traditional media outlets and the teams they cover. They are both seeking to reach their audiences with exclusive content on their own platforms. The "need" for schools to get media coverage – which formed that original partnership – is obsolete.

This is an interesting column from Ronnie Ramos, the NCAA's Managing Director for Digital Communications. Traditionally, schools and their conferences have relied heavily on the legacy media to provide coverage of their athletic events. Almost since the dawn of sports news coverage, media outlets have assigned beat reporters to a particular school, conference or sport to produce news, analysis and opinion on college athletics.

The rights to broadcasting those events--be it via television, radio and now the internet--have belonged to the schools and conferences. For championship events sponsored by the NCAA, those rights belong to the league. Those broadcast rights are worth billions.

Enter the advent of social media and the traditional relationship changes. The same sports journalists that the schools relied on to provide coverage--and to whom they granted incredible access--are now seen as competitors when they "live tweet" or "live blog" an event.

At what point does live tweeting and blogging become a competitor? If you tweet too much or update the live blog too often, are you seriously infringing on the school or conference right to provide live coverage?

As Ramos points out,  both the institutions and the media are constantly looking for new ways to engage and inform their audiences. Both have taken to social media as a way to do so. If a reporter with 40,000 followers on Twitter is providing more frequent coverage of a live event than the school's twitter feed with around 16,000 then the reporter's reach might be seen as a threat to the school's ability to draw a greater following.

Frankly, until someone figures out how to monetize a twitter feed this issue isn't going to cause a big storm. Yes, some fans may elect to follow a twitter feed rather than tune or log into a broadcast. And yes, the feed with the greater reach and credibility is probably going to get more action than the smaller one.

It's only when those billions in revenues are threatened--or when a new source of revenue draws competition--that things can start getting hairy. The Washington beat writer who received the reprimand might next see his credentials yanked for tweeting too much. At that point, Mr. Sports Reporter becomes no more influential than the Average Joe watching the game from the stands, on TV or the internet.

Social media is changing how fans get information. That's as true in sports as it is in politics and pop culture. The question is how these changes will affect the depth and quality of the information they get.

May you live in interesting times, indeed.

Times-Picayune changes an omen for Alabama newspapers? UPDATE: Yes

Late last night, the New York Times’ Media Decoder blog dropped a bomb by reporting that the New Orleans Times-Picayune was facing major cuts and would reduce publication from daily editions to three times a week.

The Pulitzer prize winning daily that survived the Civil War and Hurricane Katrina appears to have been brought to her knees by a media company—Advance Communications—owned by the Newhouse family. That company owns newspapers all over the country, including dailies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Oregon.

It also happens to own the three major dailies published in Alabama—the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and the Mobile Press-Register.

Earlier this week, those three papers’ combined website underwent a massive restructuring, completely changing the format and layout of the site and its iconic homepage. Ominously, the Times-Pic’s own website—NOLA.com—recently saw its website undergo a similar transformation.

Does that portend major changes in the three papers serving the largest metropolitan areas in the state of Alabama?

Jim Romenesko—a prominent blogger on all things print media and journalism—says he’s heard that it does.

The Mobile Press-Register is the oldest daily paper in the state of Alabama. Founded in 1813, it’s even older than the Times-Pic, which was established in 1837.

Its former publisher is Ricky Mathews, who was named publisher of the Times-Pic in March.

Interestingly enough, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Press-Register printed editions of the Times-Pic at its facility in downtown Mobile and transported the papers to the New Orleans area for distribution.

While saddening, these changes are a sign of the times. People just don’t get their news from a printed daily paper anymore. By the time a story is printed in the wee hours of the morning and delivered to your door or favorite newsstand, it’s ancient history. Many publishing companies sticking to old-school journalism and publishing norms exacerbate their plight by ignoring the wishes of consumers by telling readers what they should be reading instead of giving them what they want to read. Consumers respond by choosing other sources of news, including the rapidly growing social media networks, message boards and blogs like the one you’re reading now.

Times, they are a changin’.

UPDATE: Shortly after this entry was published, Advance published the following announcement at al.com:

A new digitally focused media company — the Alabama Media Group, which will include The Birmingham News, the Press-Register of Mobile, The Huntsville Times and al.com — will launch this fall to serve readers and advertisers across the state, according to Cindy Martin, who will become president of the new organization.

The change is designed to reshape how Alabama's leading media companies deliver award-winning local news, sports and entertainment coverage in an increasingly digital age. The Alabama Media Group will dramatically expand its news-gathering efforts around the clock, seven days a week, while offering enhanced printed newspapers on a schedule of three days a week. The newspapers will be home-delivered and sold in stores on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only.

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