What does it say about the finely tuned sensibilities of newspaper editors that they consistently, time and again, all the time [oops! see below and Trib story] run murder stories emphasizing the victim, usually as undeserving of his murder, when readers like me want to know rather about the son of a bitch who did it?

As in this story, barely retrievable on the clunky Sun-Times site (no clunkier than Chi Trib’s), about the nice-guy landlord and the 28–year-old accused:

William Hallin went out of his way to help the people living in his two Chicago apartment buildings — doing repairs promptly and even taking some residents their mail when he stopped by, tenants said Sunday.

His easygoing manner made it even more difficult for those who knew the 67-year-old Hallin to understand how he could have been beaten to death, then set on fire — allegedly by a tenant who owed rent money.

As if most murders made sense and were richly deserved.  Look up the accused, people.  We are used to reading about murders and having our heartstrings tugged.  We are more interested in social pathology than social justice, however misguidingly that is conceived.

Later: I was so busy generalizing about murder stories, citing only Sun-Times, that I never got around to reading Chi Trib on the same story.  My friend and news bulldog Nicholas Stix did, and nails it in his follow-up comment below.  Much thanks to him and to this interactive medium known as blogging, which by its nature, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, including omissions.

Thanks also, and this is very important, to Chicago not being a one-newspaper town.  I’ve said it before: what one misses, the other gets for us.  That’s competition, folks, the lifeblood of newspapering and almost everything else in a capitalistic, free, society.