LA Times message for victims of tragedies: Can we have your money?
A heart felt message from LA Times Homicide Blog.
I’ve noticed Jill Levoy’s name is no longer on the Homicide Blog and I also noticed some interestingly
TACKY advertising. (I’ve also noticed that unlike when Jill did the blog when everyone’s race got mentioned it’s now back to the standard man and black man or woman and Latina woman, which is great, because I have always appreciated ethnic meaning less human or special kind of human.) Apparently since the vast majority of the people who are listed on the homicide blog are working class people of color the LA Times in keeping with the theme of:
Money
Money
Money
Money
The Times has decided to go the route of late night broadcast TV (remember the "I have fallen and I can’t get up" lady and Larry H Parker) and use the Homicide blog to advertise really inappropriate things (this ad is not on Bottleneck, which deals with traffic and covered the Meterolink crash) like the flashing ambulance chasing “Metrolink Crash Victims” lawyer ads and apparently the ambulance chasers paid a lot of money for that spot, because that’s the only ad that comes up on that page…
Jill thought the Homicide blog would help.
Unfortunately it seemed to have only help marketers (with stereotypes firmly planted in their heads) to be able to more easily determine where to concentrate their monies on LA Times' website. So it's a win-win for the marketers and the LA Times. The marketers know who reads what and can focus their ads keeping all stereotypes in mind. The LA Times' can say they cover working class people of color and get the people of those communities to read the paper a little bit more, with absolutely no real in depth look at the community where the deaths have occurred.
The homicide blog, especially with Jill gone does nothing but cement stereotypes; from the one off lines of the death to the heart breaking unedited comments. It’s a way to be completely racist, but in the not touching you kind of way.
Until the LA Times regularly does feature stories on South LA, the Eastside and the North East SFV there is no way that should be the blog that represents the majority of coverage in those sections of town, but sadly it is.
Pretty tragic I don’t think Jill’s intent of that blog was to herd all of the black and Latino people into one spot, so the unscrupulous could throw tactless marketing at them.
To me it's not just about the bad journalism, but about them just being total assholes.
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