Cher Phillips

Views on online media and journalism

Lebrew Jones – great package, yet reaching

About halfway through the online package on Lebrew Jones and the Death of Micki Hall when it became clear why the reporter was questioning Lebrew Jones innocence, I said “Oh my God” loud enough that someone in the next room wanted to know what was wrong. The Oh My God Page

I found this story riveting. It was easy to read and the online design did a wonderful job of pulling me through it. The writing was very strong while being concise.

There were some things that I thought would have improved my experience.

The first video told the same story written in the first two pages of the written story. This was a temptation not to want to open any more videos, or read further into the story. I could easily have made a choice at this point and simply done one or the other. Maybe that’s good, maybe it isn’t.

The videos also do not have a start and stop feature. People kept coming in and talking to me, and I had to start video segments over, instead of pausing. jones3.jpg

I thought the handling of graphic material was tasteful.

The story was told in an in-depth fashion. I didn’t feel robbed of a good read. When I see succinct online writing, that’s generally what I think will happen. However, I did want a little more, but that’s me.

I wondered about the Christine Young’s role in the story. She is a part of it. There was a point when she was interviewing the sister, when her question interjected showed her desire to prove someone other than Jones was guilty of murder of the young woman. I wondered about the ethics of the story and found that Al Tompkin’s rave review of the work on Poynter’s site. However, I liked very much the credit page.

I also had some nagging questions about a point revealed in the telling of the story. This man had a 66 IQ – isn’t he mentally disabled or very close to it? Why wasn’t that point given more strength in the story? I also came away from this work with the strange feeling that maybe the author was suggesting that the van driver killed Micki Hall. In the opening, she pointed out that the driver didn’t like Hall. The forensic sources felt like they were pointing in that direction, with the character breakdown of how the killer might feel from the staging of the photos and the several times Young brings up how he left. Maybe it’s the narrative that begs a protagonist. But I found this kind of reaching too much.

4 Comments »

  lindablasi wrote @

I don’t think the reporter was questioning Jones’ innocence; it seemed me she was questioning his guilt. I also don’t know what you said it “begs a protagonist.” The protagonists are Lebrew Jones and the girl’s mother. I didn’t see how it implicated the van driver, to me it implicated the pimp. And how should the reporter have “given more strength” to Jones’ IQ??

  philicher wrote @

Ugh…. I never said she was questioning his innocence.

Rather, I think she was perhaps too personally invested in finding him not guilty. You can hear that in her question to the sister during an interview, when the sister provides info that can only be seen as heresay and can never be supported and documented. Does the source provide what the reporter so desperately wants in order to please her? It begs that question.

The method of story telling begs a protagonist. It NEEDS a bad guy in the narrative to make it entertaining. It did implicate the van driver in very subtle ways, the pimp in more obvious ways.

Jones IQ speaks to his capacity and vulnerability of used by detectives as a fall guy for the murder. Here is a man who is developmentally disabled — if his IQ is that low. Why gloss over that point when it goes miles in explaining how this could happen and how he could be convinced to give a false confession– telling the story about the girl killing herself.

  ccsnyder wrote @

Cher, you say, “ugh…I never said she’s questioning his innocence”
So then who wrote this (awkward and incomplete) first sentence of your blog?
“About halfway through the online package on Lebrew Jones and the Death of Micki Hall when it became clear why the reporter was questioning Lebrew Jones innocence.”

Also, I think you mean VILLAIN, not protagonist. See definitions below:

vil·lain /ˈvɪlən/ –noun 1. a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel.
2. a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot

pro·tag·o·nist /proʊˈtægənɪst/ –noun 1. the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work.
2. a proponent for or advocate of a political cause, social program, etc.

  philicher wrote @

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

*This* is why I dropped my other blog.

Even in an academic discussion, to assume someone is a “VILLIAN” in a feature story would not be very objective, now would it?


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