Today’s Word on the Street column marks the official send-off for reporter Molly Parker. She’s moving to Charleston, South Carolina, to work at the Charleston Regional Business Journal. South Carolina is a very pretty state (my wife went to grad school at the University of South Carolina in Columbia) and Charleston is right on the coast, so I’m sure she’ll be very happy living there. Best of luck to you, Molly!

A while back I criticized the paper for labeling a police action a “homicide.” Today, it appears they have seen the light:

Lewis’ slaying is the city’s tenth. Not included in the list of deaths is the fatal shooting by police of 26-year-old James E. Lee. Lee was killed after he reportedly refused to drop a handgun when police responded to his Peoria home on a domestic disturbance call on April 26.

That’s more like it. Thanks to alert reader PeoriaIllinoisan for bringing this to my attention.

Saturday brought news of another homicide in Peoria. The Journal Star reports that “Ronald J. Lewis Jr., 17, of 3418 W. Villa Ridge, died from a gunshot wound to the chest in the 200 block of Green Street.” Without taking anything away from the horror of this or other killings this year, I have an observation about how it’s being reported in the news.

I noticed that the Journal Star is reporting it as the eleventh homicide of 2007, whereas other news outlets like WHOI and WMBD-AM are reporting it as the tenth homicide. Why the discrepancy?

Well, the Journal Star actually explains later in their story. They say:

Among the 11 homicides in the city this year is the fatal shooting by police of a man armed with a gun when officers responded to a domestic disturbance call.

While the word “homicide” can be defined as a generic term for “killing,” it carries the connotation that the killing was done by a civilian, not law enforcement officers who are granted power by the state to use deadly force (unless the officer used such force unlawfully). It would be like including emergency vehicles in the statistics for moving violations because they go over the speed limit and run red lights. Or consider that the Journal Star doesn’t report the killings in Iraq as “homicides.” One would expect them to use the term consistently if they believed it to mean/imply nothing more than “killing.”

Just to give a little example of denotation versus connotation, I’ve deliberately chosen to title this post “Journal Star inflates homicide numbers.” After all, to “inflate” simply means to increase in size, right? But of course, there’s a negative connotation to that word as well. I’m being accurate, yet tacitly editorializing. One wonders whether the Journal Star is doing the same.

Just a quick note to the Journal Star Editorial Board: We get it. You didn’t like Mayor Ardis’s comments in InterBusiness Issues. You want to defend your institution. Fair enough.

But now you’re going to write an editorial about it every day? Really? You don’t think that’s a little overkill or that it makes you look petty? And, more importantly, are there no more significant things happening in the world about which to editorialize?

Here’s my unsolicited advice: You’ve made your point. Now let it go.

Who writes the headlines for the Journal Star? Whoever it is could use a little Prozac. Lately, the negative spin on some stories has been disappointing.

For example, in today’s paper is the headline, “O’Brien Field fails to attract growth.” However, after reading the article, one could just as easily have headlined it, “TIF could spur redevelopment around ballpark.” Both headlines are equally valid, but one is negative, the other positive. Why does the headline writer choose a negative tone?

Here’s another example: “Committee for city growth shrinking in size.” That was the headline about the Heart of Peoria Commission’s (HOPC) meeting where they discussed the Mayor’s proposal to have the HOPC become a private advocacy group. This headline is poor on so many levels, but let’s start with the fact that the HOPC is not a “committee for city growth.” It’s a commission to facilitate implementation of the Heart of Peoria Plan, primarily. Secondly, the article wasn’t about the size of the commission (it was mentioned in passing that we have some vacancies, but so do many other commissions), but rather the future of the commission, so the headline is misleading. It appears the headline-writer didn’t even bother to read or understand the whole article, but instead just picked out the first negative comment and made that the label.

All I can say to the anonymous headline writer is, “Gray skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face… wipe off that frown and cheer up, put on a happy face!”

The Journal Star has been caught deleting a swath of comments because of one complaint of a personal attack in one of the comments. A little overkill, wouldn’t you say?

I got the same e-mail Billy did, but he beat me to putting it up on the blog, so kudos to him. Check out the Peoria Pundit to read all the details.

It’s official. The Journal Star has announced that the deal is closed and they are part of the Gatehouse Media family of newspapers. Also announced was that Ken Mauser is the publisher of the Journal Star (he had been interim publisher since December 2006).

So, you can take down the “Save the Journal Star” website and yard signs now.

The Journal Star Editorial Board is no longer fazed by violence in the streets of Peoria. It’s so ho-hum, you know. Recently, two cars sped by each other on Wisconsin Avenue — the occupants of one shooting at the other — all the while children at Glen Oak school were outside for recess. The school was on lock-down the rest of the day, and thankfully, no one was hurt.

Normally, shooting in the streets, especially around children, would be occasion for outrage. It would be occasion for the editors of a newspaper to call for greater police protection and for neighborhoods to pull together. But that’s not what the Journal Star’s editors do. No, to them this violence in our streets is nothing more than fodder to snipe at neighbors — neighbors whose children were just put at risk by gunfire — for opposing the school district’s attempt to move Glen Oak School to a corner adjacent to Glen Oak Park.

The petty response here would be to adopt the tactics used by some of those opposed to building a new school adjacent to upper Glen Oak Park and say that this proves what a dangerous neighborhood the current facility is in, that the traffic there really is bad, and that these children deserve a safer environment – perhaps close to a park, where the primary threats come from squirrels dropping acorns from centuries-old oak trees. The more mature, measured, honest stance is to acknowledge that these things happen sometimes, that they can occur anywhere, that no one was hurt and that a singular incident should not be the basis for any long-term decisions.

That’s their response. “These things happen sometimes.” What things? Shooting in the street while children are present. School children being in harm’s way during recess. Car chases with gunfire next to a school. Those things. They happen sometimes. In fact, “they can occur anywhere.” Why, just the other day an executive was chasing a chiropractor through Germantown Hills in his Jaguar while shooting at him, right? Not.

When those parents hear their children were in harm’s way, they don’t think, “oh dear, those things happen sometimes.” They think, “why am I still living here? How can I get out?”

“No one was hurt,” they say. Really? No one? The city isn’t hurt by violence in the streets? The children aren’t hurt by seeing this kind of violence and becoming numb to it? The families aren’t hurt by heartless editorials like this one that berate them for being involved, for fighting for what they feel is best for their neighborhood and their children?

This was the most heartless, mean-spirited editorial I’ve ever seen printed on the pages of the Journal Star. No compassion, just rhetorical gamesmanship. Is this the kind of civil discourse that the Journal Star considers superior to blogs?