Do something crazy

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THE BOSTON GLOBE named its 25 Most Stylish Bostonians last week. Media Farm did not make the cut. Then again, neither did Veronica Chao. We're used to being slighted, but never-NEVER-treat Our Love like that. Next time, Globe, there will be repercussions.

THE BIG NEWS of the week was the sensational murder of Needham grandfather Robert Moore, who was allegedly beaten to death by his crazed sprinkler system contractor. This development elicited a flurry of lurid front-page coverage in both dailies.

No less than six reporters collaborated on the Globe's efforts, while the Herald contributed an unusually understated cover ("TERRORIZED: Murder, downtown standoff rock Needham," alongside a picture of a Statie wielding an automatic weapon), online polls ("Are you concerned about an increase in crime in the suburbs?" No, we like it just fine, thanks), and typically breathless coverage: "Needham's suburban calm was shattered yesterday when a massive police manhunt for a murder suspect locked down kids in school as a separate incident paralyzed the town center with gun-drawn cops, K-9 search dogs and news copters overhead." Oh, is that all?

The day before, a 45-year-old Dorchester pizza shop owner was shot in the head after a teen gunman robbed him of $60. In the Globe, the story warranted placement on the lower corner of B1 (sometimes, but not often, urban murders have risen higher; often, they fall deeper inside the City & Region section); the next day, when the shooting victim died, Needham was under siege, and the pizza clerk's death earned a sliver of the metro page.

The Herald has generally been more aggressive than the Globe in its coverage of the daily march of the city's three-year murder wave, and the inches it devoted to this murder seemed to be consistent with the way it has covered most of the city's 59 other murders to date. However, when held up against the ferocity it covered the Needham beating with (including a Margery Eagan column lamenting the fact that you can't damn trust nobody no more), this urban slaying felt like an afterthought.

Some will undoubtedly see nefarious motives in both papers' apparent attitude that a murder in the suburbs is more exceptional and more newsworthy than a murder in Dorchester. White on white crime, it seems, sells, while fatal stickups for small change do not.

We're not charging out-and-out racism, even though the last Boston murder to warrant the kind of coverage we're seeing out of Needham was the slaying of Chiara Levin, a pretty white girl from Kentucky. The problem isn't one of valuing white lives above nonwhite ones (the dead pizza guy was a Russian immigrant), but one of perverted expectations and desensitized newsrooms. Sensationalism sells; thus, a mentally ill contractor bludgeoning an old man to death is news, while another murder in Dorchester really isn't.

Our problem is, when a pizza shop guy getting shot in the head for trying to stop a guy from stealing $60 isn't sensational enough to warrant more play, something's seriously wrong with our industry's priorities-and our expectations. It's almost as if there's an expectation of violence in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan, so when that expectation is met, it's not seen so much as news as it is the fulfillment of the probable.

Eagan's column seems to confirm this. "It was the first murder in Needham since 1989," she writes. "Everybody was stunned. These things never happen, until they happen."

Except, of course, for when they happen all the time.

THE OTHER BIG NEWS of the week was Governor Deval Patrick's announcement that he's going to bleed the state's police officers dry. You know that story. It's been reported everywhere. It's one that's got legs because the narrative is so strong-even if it isn't really a story at all. From Jon Keller's blog:

Of course, police details have become such a hot-button issue, it's understandable that even that vague promise would excite people ... But if you're on the edge of your seat wondering what comes next, you should know that the governor's quotes from his WTKK Radio appearance don't tell the full story. I was there in the studio with photojournalist Brian Foley working on a story for last night's 11pm news when the governor said what he said about looking at the detail system. His eyes widened when hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braude reacted to his comments by telling Patrick he had just made big news. He shook his head sternly, and with visible irritation, repeated that he was promising only to "look at" the issue in the broader context of putting all perceived inefficiencies on the table for review.