St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1945-05-11

sonar CSlGpI1OuS Calls Or u1Scl
buy the paper.
These readers charge that the
playing up OF murder, robbery, race
mtidelity, etc., tend to tear the race
down and to hold the group up in
an unfavorable light for the rest
of the world. The attitude is that
Negroes should hide as much as
possible of their faults and write
only of what can be accepted as
good.
These complaints can be broken
down and analysed if one would
take the trouble, and the subject
is fitting for comment here. The
person who sits down and writes a
letter to a newspaper editor, COM
planning of the playing up of the
so-called unwelcomed crime story
all over the paper which he or she
would not deem good reading, has
usually greater interest in
(white) daily papers than a funda-
mental desire to see Improvement
in publications of his own race. OF
course this is an extreme view in
some cases but can be found to holo
water when universally applied.
These "rewriters" fall mainly into
a class with which social workers,
ministers, lawyers, doctors, society
folk, and others of the profess
sional group are identified.
The Negro newspaper that has a
one-tenth circulation, or finds the
bulk of its circulation among these
people, is fortunate for such circu-
lation putting them over the ten
or twenty thousand mark because,
Brother, there "ain't" that many
of them.
These chronic complaints are
penned by persons who demand
that an entire race conform to their
view of how they would want the
white man to see us. The Negro
who shoots craps, beats his wife,
gets drunk on Saturday night,
steals a basket of potatoes from
the corner grocery store, is re-
garded as a strange animal with
whom no thinking Negro should
want to be identified. Further,
this same Negro has no counterpart
in any other race, according to
certain way of thinking that pre-
walls among the "rewriters"; conse-
quently, to identify him with the
dignity of attention in a news story
is an objectionable error, so think
the "rewriters."
The same might go for the man
who kills a fellow in fit of anger
or shoots up the bar, strangles
girl, rapes child, robs a home, or
Stays an unfaithful wife. To the
"rewriters" none of these things is
worthy of comment. Instead, the
good, as outlined by them, would be
mainly long-involved stories about
a Negroes suing some restaurant
for refusing to serve him; heavy
stories in the efforts of the N. A.
A. c. P, or other organizations to
win the right for a Negro to sit
down beside white man on train,
bus, or reside with him in a hotel,
or stories about inter-racial ban
quets where sleep-producing talks
are delivered by the hour and the
participants sit side by side with
big-name whites.
To disagree, I would say that
crime news, as such, is just as i'm
portant part of a newspaper COW
erage as its editorials. Crime
stories, while admittedly morbid,
nauseating, as well as disturbing
to sensitive readers, do more to
mirror the temper, morale, and
habits of a community than any
other news story.
The crime story is basic in a
Negro newspaper as well as any
white paper, and those papers
which shy away from the formula
as old as the craft of communica-