CLEWS The Historic True Crime Blog

The Digital Guardian

Christmas is coming a tad bit early for fans of history and journalism, for it has just been announced that The Guardian has digitized its entire massive archive. And for a few days next month, it's offering everyone in the world free access to two centuries' worth of its pages.

The Guardian - along with its Sunday edition, the Observer - will be text-searchable. In an instant, you'll be able to read whatever it's ever covered since it was founded in Manchester, England in 1821. The Observer dates back to 1791! At various times it has also run pieces from the Washington Post as well as translations of articles from Le Monde.

According to the announcement, the first phase of the Guardian News & Media archive, containing the Guardian from 1821 to 1975 and the Observer from 1900 to 1975, will launch on November 3. The website is not yet working now.

"Readers will be offered free 24-hour access during November, but after this trial period charging will be introduced," it was announced. "The rest of the archive will launch early in 2008, making more than 1.2m pages of digitised news content available, with Observer content available from its launch as the world's first Sunday newspaper in 1791."

I already have a list started of the articles I want to find. What do you want to read from the pages of the past? If I'm not the only one thrilled by the availability of this resource, I'll remind you when the freebie day comes.

The Mass Media's Mass Hysteria

Occasionally our mass media tries to put a headline crime in context. They usually succeed only in displaying grotesque laziness and historical illiteracy.

The tragedy at Virginia Tech was not even close! to being "the worst massacre in US history" or the "worst shooting massacre in US history" -- and to call it such is to put on public display your utter and complete ignorance.

"Worst massacre?" Have you forgotten 9/11 already? Oklahoma City? What about the multiple massacres of Native Americans? Take your pick. Ever hear of Wounded Knee? What about the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

Nor was it even the worst "school massacre" or "campus massacre" in the United States. This was. You'd think our media would've figured this out when they erroneously labeled Columbine the "worst school massacre in US history."

Are they so hyped up on sensationalism that their memory fails them? Or do they just not give a good goddamn?

It is truly regrettable for so many reasons. The public is left to think that mass murders are now an "epidemic," that our society has somehow worsened over time, and that our laws have to be changed to respond to new threats. Without an accurate historical context, it's easy to come to the wrong conclusions.

Thank God the only copycats to surface so far are our nation's lazy, stupid journalists.

The following are new members of the Clews Hall of Shame! Shame! Shame! This list would be even longer, but I'll give media outside the US a pass on this one. Each of these media outlets screwed up (though there's always the faint hope that, by the time you click on these links, some might have corrected themselves) --

• MSNBC - "the worst school massacre in US history"
• ABC - George Stephanopoulos: "The worst campus massacre before Virginia Tech was back in the University of Texas in 1966."
• Newsweek - "worst massacre in U.S. history"
• Time - "the worst massacre in US history"
• Baltimore Sun - "the worst school massacre in US history"
• Los Angeles Times - "the worst school massacre in history"
• Court TV Crime Library ("the worst mass murder in American history," indeed! This is a particularly egregious and unforgivable error on a website that purports to offer encyclopedic treatment of historic crimes, including articles on the Bath massacre and Mountain Meadows.)
• New Jersey Star-Ledger - "America's worst campus massacre"
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution - "worst campus massacre in US history"
• New York Daily News - "the worst campus massacre in American history"
• Troy Record - "the nation's worst massacre"
• WorldNetDaily - "America's worst school massacre"
• Campus Times - "worst school massacre in United States history"
• Shreveport Times - "worst massacre in American history"
• Asheville Citizen-Times "The worst massacre in U.S. history"
• Janesville Gazette - "the worst massacre in US history"
• Roanoke Times - "worst school massacre in US history"
• Daily Titan - "worst massacre in US history"
• Bakersfield Californian - "the worst massacre in the country's history."

The Great Journalism Insult Wars

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness... the shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

--William Butler Yeats

A brief detour from history's bloody headlines will take the historic newspaper aficionado to some curious sidebars. One of my favorite encounters when reading old papers or books touching on old journalism are the Great Insults. For nobody -- no one on the planet -- can play the duzens like a newspaperman.

They're best when aiming for one another. The most famous feud to rock New York's popular rags was the War of Words between Joseph Pulitzer (New York World) and Charles Dana (New York Sun). Here are a pair of gems the men exchanged (though I can't remember where I found them):

[He is] a contemporary Judas, whose face is repulsive, cunning, stamped with malice, falseness, treachery, dishonesty, greed and venal self abasement. --Charles Dana’s New York Sun, on Joseph Pulitzer

[He is] a mendacious blackguard, assaulter of women, an unmitigated scoundrel, actuated by a hatred that amounts to insanity. --Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, on Charles Dana

Our wonderful internet now includes the text of a speech given to the National Conference of Editorial Writers by famous Pulitzer-winning journalist Michael Gartner, and in that speech, he shares some of the more shocking insults by famous print men. Here are some tidbits from the speech. Enjoy!

William Allen White, on H.L. Mencken: "With a pig's eyes that never look up, with a pig's snout that loves muck, with a pig's brain that knows only the sty, and a pig's squal that cries only when he is hurt, he sometimes opens his pig's mouth, fanged and ugly, and lets out the voice of God -- railing at the whitewash that covers the manure about his habitat."

The Jackson (Miss.) Daily News on H.L. Mencken: "Mencken, with his filthy verbal hemorrhages, is so low down in the moral scale, so damnably dirty, so vile and degenerate, that when his time comes to die it will take a special dispensation from heaven to get him into the bottomest pit of hell."

William Allen White on Publisher Frank Munsey: "Frank Munsey, the great publisher is dead. Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meat packer, the morals of a money changer and the manners of an undertaker. He and his kind have about succeeded in transforming a once noble profession into an 8 percent security. May he rest in trust!"

I can think of more than a few "journalists" of today (Nancy Grace, Don Imus, etc.) who need a tongue-lashing with a cat-o'-nine-tails like William Allen White.

The Grant Media Craze

The Detroit News, the publication at the epicenter of the true crime case of the week, namely the murder of Tara Grant by her husband Stephen Grant of Washington Township, Macomb County, Michigan, is wondering why the story received so much attention. A reporter inquired here at Clews. CrimeRant and others are weighing in.

Do you know what makes people so interested in spousal murders?

Speaking for myself, I am fascinated by these books. When I read of such a case, I want to know a few things: namely, why, why, why, why, and why.

Let's ask John Waters why these cases are so fascinating. He's hosting a new show to talk all about them. Fictionalized. Reduced to the most sensational elements. You can read the comic book version of the TV show here. From Playback Magazine: "The 13 x 30 true crime series Love You to Death, about spouses who have killed their loved ones, is scheduled to air in the spring on Global and Court TV, hosted by John Waters."

The Grant case certainly drew a lot of attention. Missing persons cases that look like probable spousal murders attract a lot of attention generally, especially when the victim is attractive, and from the outside, the marriage looks happy. Then it ends in an act of incredible rage and violence. What strikes me the most about these cases is the overkill that continues long after the wife is dead. Laci Peterson, Nicole Simpson, poor Mrs. Grant. Not found intact. What makes these cases fascinating? Maybe it's because the situation that apparently led to the murder can seem somewhat familiar to all of us.

Sexual impropriety, financial troubles, emails, flakiness, possible violence, possible warning signs. If we haven't lived it ourselves, perhaps we know others who have. I reminded him that it's a domestic violence case and it should be characterized as such.

Some coverage is good. Details are good. When we know the details we recognize these patterns... hopefully not in our own lives or the lives of our sisters, cousins, etc.

Of course, the victim must be beautiful to be on TV. That's the media's one strict criteria. That applies to fiction and non-fiction. So let's marvel at the heroines that John Waters will introduce us to.

Why are we fascinated by these cases?

A Good Old-Fashioned Everlasting Love Triangle

All this business about the reverend who was busted with massages and meth reminded me of a certain kind of newspaper article that you might notice if you do any research in the 1920s but which is less common today. It wasn’t that long ago that everyday adulterers sometimes found their names published in the local newspapers for all their friends and family to learn, and not just when the eternal love triangle turned deadly, ended in arrest for bigamy or other criminal charges, or involved a man of the cloth.

In the early 20th century, any garden variety divorce case with a good, strong whiff of sex—particularly when third parties were named—was a good bet for page one, sometimes with illustrations or photographs. Even an affair several states away could earn a slot above the fold.

Readers enjoyed stories about old-fashioned sexual misconduct replete with proper names and details. Few public or private people enjoyed or could reasonably expect privacy in their most personal lives. Before and through the 1920s, most every newspaper published in the United States was a local scandal sheet. Editors routinely sent reporters to the courthouse to write stories about divorce cases and civil lawsuits for personal torts with euphemistic legal names like “alienation of affections” and “criminal conversation.” Translation—adultery. (The word “alienation” there is a concept from property law. To “alienate” here means to separate possession from ownership – the wife owns her husband, but the mistress is in possession, enjoying the rents and labors of another’s man.)

This piece was typical of such courthouse reporting. In this case, the spurned wife sued her husband’s mistress.

MRS. MAMIE ALLEN ASKS HEART BALM

A suit for $50,000 damages for alleged alienation of her husband’s affections was filed today by Mrs. Mamie F. Allen, wife of John H. Allen, of the Allen Electric Company, 210 East Fifteenth street, against Miss Mary Thomas, formerly stenographer and bookkeeper for Mr. Allen. The divorce case of the Allens is set for trial April 7. Mr. Allen today said the suit was merely an effort to obtain money and incite prejudice before that case was heard.

But even when there wasn’t scandal, in the 1920s newspapers, an ordinary divorce involving wholly private persons who’d been faithful during the marriage still merited a few lines on an inside page.

DIVORCES TO THIRTY-FOUR

William Spencer Adams, traveling salesman, said his wife, Daisy Adams, left him in 1918 and four years later he found her with a carnival. In the meantime, he went on, she acquired the habit of smoking cigarettes—not a cause for divorce, the court observed—and when he rented her an apartment in Springfield, Mo., she continued her nagging, spent all his money, and refused to let him talk with the children. He was given a divorce.

Both of these gems are from the Kansas City Star, 1924, and this last one is from the Marion Daily Star in Ohio, 1919. Imagine something like this appearing in your local newspaper today. Whether you'd react with shock or amusement depends, I suppose, on whether you'd run the risk of being so depicted.