Have you ever considered why readers and writers seem so obsessed with crime and criminals?

Many books, novels, movies and other entertainment are about crime. Crime has all of the ingredients of high drama – greed and passion, life and death, murder, theft and other crimes. 

In an informal, non-scientific survey, newspaper editors told us their single-copy sales rose every time they led the front page with a high profile crime story. 

When we worked on the tabloid Philadelphia Daily News, we had four full-time reporters covering cops, gangs and crime 24 hours a day. 

Since 400,00 to 500,00 copies of our newspaper were bought on the street each day – we had no subscribers – our lead story almost always involved crime. 

A Washington Post reporter once asked why we always seemed to lead with crime stories. Our managing editor told him it was because crime sold newspapers.

“I’m not going to apologize for wanting to sell as many of our newspaper as possible,” he said. 

If you’re assigned to the police beat, don’t despair. You’ll have a front row seat at such drama. But you need to look beyond the incident reports to find real stories your readers want.

As a crime reporter, The Miami Herald’s Edna Buchanan beat many of us. 

She reported on:

• A man who was stabbed to death because he stepped on someone’s toes in a movie theatre.
• A two-year-old framed for a playmate’s death.
• A woman who committed suicide because she couldn’t get her leaky roof fixed.
• A drug smuggler who died when 14 of 82 double-wrapped condoms of cocaine in his stomach leaked.

 She wrote: “His last meal was worth $30,000 and it killed him.” 

Her colleagues disagreed about which of her first sentences was the classic Edna lead. Fellow writer Calvin Trillin said he favored the fried-chicken lead. 

In this story, an ex-con lurched drunkenly into a Church’s outlet, shoved his way to the front of the line and ordered a three-piece box of fried chicken. 

Told all the fried chicken was gone, Gary Robinson slugged the young woman at the counter. As a result, a security guard shot and killed Robinson.

Edna began her story “Gary Robinson died hungry.”

Next: Become a better professional

The above will appear in The Art of Compelling Writing, Volume 3, which is already in the works. Volumes 1 and 2 are available at Amazon.com. Volume 3 will appear this year. These books were published to help editors like you teach your reporters how to write well.

Proceeds go to support adult literacy tutoring. 

You will help someone learn to read and write.

To comment or with questions, please write JerryBellune@yahoo.com