Why is a simple story about an employee killing another..national news?

[Stuart G]

Ohio St.: Employee kills co-worker, then self (AP)
AP - A new Ohio State University custodial employee who received a bad job evaluation shot two co-workers in a campus maintenance building, killing one of them, and then fatally shot himself, official...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35774442/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

This crap is local city newsroom stuff. Why the hell is it a national story? Even for a few hours? The media is out of control in my opinion.

[mikelgb]

1. keyword: campus

[louis-t]

2. If it bleeds, it leads.

[Stuart G]

5. Maybe so...but it is still a local..story. even if it bleeds and is on campus.

It is what we used to call local news.
Someone shot someone at some company over some woman and killed himself...yea, it happens all over, every country.

[NeedleCast]

3. Sensationalism

Nothing keeps butts in seats like terror.

[pipi_k]

4. They're a little short on shark attacks, car chases, and missing blonde girl stories?

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Nobody's flown into a government building today? Nobody took any shots at the Pentagon?

OSU is the largest university in the country with 50,000 on campus. When somebody 'attacks' the second-shift maintenance crew with a gun, it makes news.

[jobycom]

7. Echoes.

It echoes the horrors of past school shootings--VT, Columbine--and of workplace violence in general.

Plus, sometimes the media jumps on these stories thinking something bigger is happening, so they commit staff to the site, and run teasers, then discover it's nothing big, but they feel like they have to get some money's worth out of it. The media looks like the great defenders of truth and freedom to us, but in the newsroom, it's just another profit-driven business trying to use its resources wisely.

That's my interpretation, anyway. Probably wrong. I usually am. :)

[Cerridwen]

8. Normalizing the abnormal

It's a process the corporate media has used for a long time in which they make abnormal behavior appear normal.

It helps to keep us all fearful of the "other" and sets it up so we know that everyone on the street and all of our neighbors are potential crooks/rapists/muggers/murderers.

I have no idea if it's intentional, though I suspect in some instances it is; but it is a consequence of the type of "reporting" that passes as "news."

It leaves the impression that the majority of the population is psychopathic; that there's a terrorist around every corner; that there is no safe space.

[GodlessBiker]

9. One person killing another is never "simple." Was the dead victim's life so valueless...

that we all just can't take a moment and hear about how it ended?

Yes, one can complain about how the media decides which murders to focus on, but to call a story about a person's murder "crap" is not called for.

[Stuart G]

12. The story is not crap...my error .....What was crap

was that this was a national story. Murder is murder. Local news, and follow up by city reporters.that is how I see it.

[MichaelHarris]

10. we could stop all of the

killing of innocent maintenance workers by requiring them to carry side arms. Once we do that we can then start requiring a 400 dollar tuition increase to cover the cost of the Glocks. An armed maintenance worker is a happy maintenance worker.

[Wilber_Stool]

11. I think it's because

all shark attacks everywhere have stopped.

[slackmaster]

13. It's propaganda

HTH

[Liberal_in_LA]

14. murders on college campuses are always big stories. Also crimes involving

college students.