A matter of news judgment: Whose celebrity death matters more? Does Trump get trumped by Prince?

As someone approaching the three-decade mark of having worked in the news business, news judgment at times becomes second nature. As routine as watching a quality shortstop gobble up ground balls even if they took a bad hop off a pebble.

Purple Rain tops Playboy ...

But there are times when the calls made by editor types create some unique circumstances.

WHEN I WOKE up Thursday morning and checked around the Internet, it seems that the potential was for a celebrity death to dominate the nation’s news reports. Joanie Laurer, a.k.a. Chyna, was found dead in her Los Angeles-area apartment

She was a part of the crew of the World Wrestling Federation of old, and gave off the impression of a semi-attractive woman who was so muscular that there was no doubt she was capable of beating the caca out of anybody who messed with her.

Now I was never much of a fan of professional wrestling. But my brother, Christopher, was. He acknowledged the “fake” status of wrestling – not really a sport, but instead an overly-physical show in which the “entertainers” do their own stunts.

And to help enhance those stunts, she wasn’t shy about admitting her use of steroid substances that bolstered her muscular bulk.

QUITE THE FREAK show, and one that I’m sure some people remember fondly. Enough that I’m pretty sure they were pissed when later Thursday morning publicists for the entertainer Prince (a.k.a. Prince Rogers Nelson) announced that he was dead.

Found at his home near Minneapolis, a city of which he was a native.

... in terms of topping Prince over Chyna.

Chyna might have gone on to appear in movies and do a spread for Playboy magazine. But it seems the film “Purple Rain” and the song “1999” are a longer-lasting legacy than the sight of a scantily-clad Chyna whom not even Hugh Hefner would publish these days (because we’re really supposed to read Playboy for the articles these days).

Prince wound up being the big celebrity death. Chyna quickly got relegated to second-class status, and I’m curious to see how her death actually gets played in the Friday newspapers.

I WONDER IF we’ll get the same type of sniping as occurred back on May 17, 1990. That was the day after both Jim Henson (the Muppets creator) and Rat Pack singer Sammy Davis, Jr., died.

Many newspapers (including the Chicago Tribune) took their share of grief for thinking that creating characters such as Kermit the Forg and Big Bird was more important than singing “The Candyman” or being Frank Sinatra’s party buddy.

Personally, I don’t think Chyna or Prince would top either Davis or Henson on the overall society contribution checklist. But obituary placements often are a matter of timing.

Chyna might have got bigger overall play if Prince’s publicists had had the decency (some might think) to hold off another day in announcing his death – which came just a few days after reports of his emergency hospitalization in the Quad Cities.

I’M SURE SOME people are going to want to take on a “conspiracy theory” mode in thinking that something suspicious exists about the singer’s death.

Now some might think this is celebrity overplay. Although I have to admit those deaths do catch a certain level of interest that the rest of the news report fails to do with its presidential campaign obsessions.

Trump's appeal isn't orange, it's green

As I look at the newspapers in front of me, I see the lede story headlines of “Trump Stumps in Indy” (say that three times quickly) and “Russia Expands Submarine Fleet, Fueling Rivalry.” The latter came from the New York Times, which relegated their Trump-related story to Page Three. Although that story told us of the potential for the upcoming Indiana primary elections (May 3) could be the ones that make it inevitable that The Donald will be the Republican presidential nominee.

As far as I’m concerned, that is all the more reason to think there’s something funky in the polluted part of Lake Michigan water that those Hoosiers are consuming in the land east of State Line Road!

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Paterno death brings back memories

Former Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno is dead. It appears to be so. We certainly hope so.

PATERNO: What a diff'rence a day makes



For having a pair of screw-ups with relation to his health would just be too much to bear.

IT SEEMS THAT this particular incident started with a website that covers the Penn State scene. They reported Saturday that Paterno – who had been hospitalized for eight days – had died.

Actually, he was dying. He wasn’t actually pronounced dead until Sunday morning.

But in the desire to be on top of things, the website got a premature tip and went with it – one that turned out to be wrong. Several other websites helped spread the word by also writing about Paterno’s demise hours before it actually happened.

They based their reports on the Penn State student website, and all wound up having to take it back. Of course, they were quick to blame the student website, and my understanding is that someone officially gave up his editorial post with the website on Sunday – expressing shame at what went wrong.

OF COURSE, BY the time this happened, Paterno was actually dead. So it’s not like the report was all that far off the mark.

Now I’m not justifying the reporting of anything that was off the mark. If someone reports the death of a prominent person, the last thing one wants is that person being able to call up the reporter-type who wrote the story and say, “I’m not dead!!!”

DeANGELIS: Caught the error

But I also comprehend how such things can happen. Some times in the confusion of circumstances, people spread bad information and reporter-types get caught up in it.

One of the most-famed of these incidents involved one-time 26^th Ward Alderman Vito Marzullo, who got to read his obituary on the front page of the Chicago Tribune some two decades ago – about a decade before he actually died.

BUT IN MY own time as a reporter-type person, there have been a couple of moments I experienced with this same circumstance.

One was back in the early 1990s when I was working for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago. One day, my editors got a call informing them that one of the leaders of the Republican caucus of the Illinois state Senate – Aldo DeAngelis of Olympia Fields – had died that morning.

Supposedly, the person who spoke to us had got the information directly from a hospital official who “recognized” the man’s name as an important official when she saw the paperwork indicating he had been pronounced dead.

Unfortunately, the man who died that day was someone who had a name similar to that of the state Senate member. It wasn’t the senator, even though a hospital official had said it was.

SO WHEN I started making calls to try to piece together, I quickly found out from the senator’s staff that their boss had been in the office earlier in the day, and – unlike Generalissimo Francisco Franco – most definitely was NOT dead.

Of course, my editor initially didn’t believe me, and persisted with talk that I needed to write an obituary. It was only when I personally interviewed the senator later in the day and got his reaction (he thought it was humorous) that my editor became persuaded that the senator was not dead – and an obituary was not warranted.

I only wish I had been that fortunate a few years later – by which time I was working for United Press International in their Springfield, Ill., office. One day, I got a call informing me that state Sen. Kenneth Hall, D-East St. Louis, had been hospitalized – most likely in St. Louis.

I started making calls, both to St. Louis hospitals (none of which had him) and then to his district office on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Nobody knew nothing.

UNTIL …

A call was made by me to the office of the Illinois Senate’s Democratic leaders. I asked an aide what he knew about Hall’s health, and that aide informed me that Hall had been pronounced dead that very morning. He also informed me that he was preparing an obituary for the Senate Democratic leadership to release – and would I like to see a copy when he was done, so as to help me put together my own obituary of Hall for the wire service.

HALL: Too early



At that point, I wrote something that UPI called a “spotlight” – a two-sentence blurb that said Hall (at that point, the longest-serving member of the state Senate) had died. It was transmitted to the wire service’s clients.

I then started piecing together what information I had in the file cabinets about Hall so as to write a basic obituary that could back up the “spotlight.” It was during my preparation of that basic obituary that I learned Hall had not died. He was admitted to a hospital, and as it turned out he died two weeks later. Yes, I got an apology from that legislative aide – who admitted it was his error.

I WAS SPARED the sight of an obituary for Hall with my name attached. The wire service straightened out the mess, and that basic obit turned into a story about how long-time state Sen. Ken Hall had been hospitalized.

But I’m still the guy who “killed” Kenny Hall a couple of weeks prematurely. (And when Hall eventually died, the competition wire service managed to report that before we did; that really hurt!)

So I can appreciate how someone trying to be diligent managed to get too diligent in their efforts to report a tidbit that would catch national attention (unlike the death of Hall, which wasn’t noted outside of Illinois).

Just like what seems to have happened with Paterno this past weekend.

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News judgment a personal thing

I recall having a conversation once with a young college graduate who had the great (mis)fortune of being a reporter-type intern working for me. She wanted to know more about news judgment.

What were the rules that determined which story got top play, and which one got reduced to a three-graf brief – if not cheaped out altogether?

SHE HAD TROUBLE accepting my explanation that ultimately, the news judgment of any organization that was paying me to work for them was what story intrigues me the most.

My point is that it is a crapshoot. There is no right or wrong. There just is.

Something has to fill the space on a newspaper page or a website, or the airtime on a television or radio broadcast. There are times when totally cheap stories get big Page One play because there’s nothing better.

Then, there are days like Thursday.

ON A TYPICAL day in the Chicago news market, the fact that a federal judge set a trial date for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and that police found a body in rural Indiana that they suspect belongs to a 2-year-old who had been reported missing more than a week earlier would have fought for attention as the top story.

It would have come down to a brawl between editors who prefer politics, or those who’d rather have crime. Corruption, or cops and robbers?

But on Thursday, we had that other news judgment phenomenon that ensured neither of those stories had a chance at Page One – celebrity deaths.

First, Farrah Fawcett (although I’m of an old enough generation that a part of me wants to add “Majors”). Then, Michael Jackson.

I CAN’T RECALL a date with two such “big” entertainers passing on since May 16, 1990. That was the date that both Jim Henson (founder of the Muppets) and Sammy Davis Jr. (remember the Rat Pack?) died.

I recall the outcry caused by the Chicago Tribune when they gave Henson’s death top billing over that of Davis. Some saw a racial angle at work. Others saw some sort of elitist thought being used.

This time around, there doesn’t seem to be as many qualms.

The death of Farrah Fawcett (even though it offered newspapers and websites the chance to reproduce those full-color posters of Farrah in the bright-red bathing suit with her nipples poking prominently through the fabric) got buried by the death of Jackson.

AS FAR AS I can tell, there is one newspaper that gave Farrah top billing over Jackson – a Polish-language paper based out of New York. There also is a newspaper in Mankato, Minn., that gave the Jackson story top play, but also included a box directing people to the Fawcett obituary inside (while getting the Farrah poster picture on Page One).

Everybody else seems to be in love with the Jackson story.

Now I know the so-called rules of news judgment.

Both Fawcett of 1976 and Jackson of 1983 were pop culture icons. Back then, they were everywhere. Seriously, “Charlie’s Angels” (the program) and “Beat It” (the song) were things that will trigger memories of youth for people falling in that generation of people who are now in their early-to-mid 40s.

BOTH OF THEM since then have engaged in behavior that many consider to be (at best) erratic.

Jackson gets top billing because nobody suspected the 50-year-old was near death. By comparison, Farrah had been on a “death watch” for days, and had had the “last rites” administered just a couple of hours before she finally succumbed Thursday.

Still, I would have thought more news outlets would have tried to be like The News of Opelika, Ala., and try to do some sort of dual coverage of the two – even though that would have left fans of each respective person displeased that their preference didn’t get top billing.

In fact, it was an attempt at dual coverage that caught my attention the most. The Times of Northwest Indiana (a Munster, Ind.-based newspaper I do some work for, although I had nothing to do with the news judgment they showed for Friday’s front page) had their own reporter at Jackson’s boyhood home in Gary, Ind., to do the expected story of fans turning the site into an informal shrine to the one-time lead singer of the Jackson 5.

BUT THEY ALSO gave big Page One play to the story that on a typical day they likely would have taken over the page – the discovery of a body that likely belongs to Jada Justice.

She’s the 2-year-old mentioned earlier who had been missing, and whom police say they suspect her babysitter/distant cousin was somehow involved with her death.

It’s nice to see that at least one news organization in Chicago that had been treating the Justice search as a major story didn’t suddenly ditch the story just because of Michael Jackson.

Now if only they could have got Farrah on Page One as well (even though the only local angle I can think of is that many middle-aged men from the area were among those who once lusted after her poster), they would have managed to hit just about all the big stories.

EXCEPT FOR BLAGOJEVICH.

It appears that his court date being set never had a chance. Oh well, I’m sure his goofy antics in coming months will take over front pages and get him ample attention on many more occasions.

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EDITOR'S NOTES: Even professional baseball is managing to find ways to mourn the deaths of (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090625&content_id=5537200&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb) Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

I don't know that I think Jackson's death is being overplayed, but I am surprised that some other stories aren't (http://www.eandppub.com/2009/06/question-of-day-for-friday-is-media-overplaying-michael-jackson-death.html) creeping their way to equal attention.