Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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Archive for Sideblog »
Wrong way on 12 1/2 St.
The good news is that he didn’t kill anybody.
No wonder the kid didn’t succeed in college. He can’t even read a simple traffic sign. Good grief, what is this world coming to?
It must suck coming from a famous family sometimes. Leave the guy alone.
In other news, Sheila M. Fincham was arrested for drunk driving and assaulted two officers during the arrest.
http://www.nbc29.com/Global/story.asp?s=9607754
It’s relevant… right? No? Oh, she’s not famous. Okay.
I wonder how many of use would hate life if we lived it while constantly being referred to as “_____ _____’s son/daughter.”
I love my father greatly, but would not want to live life being referred to solely as his son. I am me. It’s why they gave me my own name.
Yeah, leave him alone. Not news (or blog) worthy.
I can’t believe I’m agreeing with will …
I call bullshit. Kyle Long is an increasingly well-known athlete, no matter who his daddy is. FSU recruited him to play baseball, as their #1 pick, though he was also offered “dozens” of football scholarships. If it’s news whenever a well-known local college athlete gets arrested for rape, burglary, or assault, I don’t see why it’s not news when a well-known local college athlete gets arrested for drunk driving, just because his father happens to be famous. If you can explain the difference to me, we’ll talk, but I’m not seeing it.
I’m in a camp that says it shouldn’t be news when a local student-athlete gets arrested for relatively minor things, like DUI or theft (i.e., not rape, no deaths involved) if it’s also not news when local student non-athletes do the same thing. So I’d put Kyle Long in that same camp — in my ideal world, I’m not hearing on the news that he got pulled over for DUI, since I’m not hearing on the news when Non-Prominent Student X gets pulled over for DUI. But I realize I’m in a minority here.
There are a LOT of things that get treated as news that I think the people don’t need to know. “Need to know” too often shades into “want to know,” IMO.
Now that’s a line of logic that I’ll buy. I’m not sure that I agree (I’ll have to chew it over), but it’s consistent and sensible.
I think of things like the coverage of the Nicole Brown Simpson murder case. Did I, as American citizen, really NEED to know everything about that case? or did I just WANT to know? What’s the media/journalism’s rightful terrain, what SHOULD they be telling us about, and where do they slip into satisfying our celebrity-obsessed voyeuristic impulses? We’re used to 24/7 coverage of high=profile cases involving celebrities, so we expect that, and we think of it as “news” that we have a right to hear about, but isn’t that just something that we’re nosy about rather than something we as citizens need to know about?
I have a ridiculously old-fashioned and moralistic sense of what journalism/the media’s role is.
So while I totally understand the voyeuristic interest in Kyle Long’s DUI charges (heck, I read all the stories on it myself), I’m not sure I see the bedrock logic of “it’s okay because it’s Kyle Long, but it’s not okay if it’s just average Joe or Jolene.” Now, a murder or a rape charge, against anyone, is newsworthy. But DUIs happen all the time and seem only to be “news” when it’s someone famous.
I used to think of DUI as a minor crime but that was before my friends lost their beautiful 21 year old daughter to a drunk driver and my husband’s 27 year old nephew was killed by a drunk driver on his way to work.
So, is this a “real” crime only if you kill someone?
It must suck coming from a famous family sometimes. Leave the guy alone.
Yeah, I mean, to be born a white, male, athletic, rich and famous in a society that discriminates for those attributes . . . and then to be held accountable by the public for one’s own (alleged) misdeeds that endangered the rest of us?
(/italics off)
(missing the retired preview option)
It must suck coming from a famous family sometimes. Leave the guy alone.
Yeah, I mean, to be born a white, male, athletic, rich and famous in a society that discriminates for those attributes . . . and then to be held accountable by the public for one’s own (alleged) misdeeds that endangered the rest of us?
I’m not saying he wasn’t born lucky. He was. But he’s a young man who appears to have made a small mistake. That’s all. Don’t make a federal case out of it. BTW, your envy and resentment is nauseating.
Bloom, any person who is picked up for DUI has endangered all of us — no argument from me there. What’s the rationale, though, for aggressively pursuing that story ONLY when it’s someone famous who does it?
Gail, of course drunk driving is terrible. I want lots and lots of cops out looking for drunk drivers all the time, and I want stricter punishments for convicted drunk drivers, and I might even want those sobriety/breathalyzer key-lock thingies to become standard on every car driving in the U.S. (have to read up on them, but I like the idea). But I’m not sure how having two different standards for how the media covers a DUI — one standard for famous people, one for the rest of us — really gets to the heart of the problem.
The distinction I made b/w the way the media covers murders/rapes and the way it covers DUI rests on my definition of newsworthiness. I can see paying tons of attention to murder or rape charges, no matter who is charged. Given the number of DUIs, it seems suspicious to me to jump on covering ONE particular person’s DUI as if it were a murder. Guaranteed, the media weren’t thinking “Kyle Long was charged with DUI? Wow, DUI is such a potentially terrible crime, it’s our responsibility to cover this story in the interest of saving lives.”
Folks, he was moving his car to park. Not a huge deal and I suspect most of the commenters here have had a drink and driven without realizing how easy it is to be over the limit.
Folks, he was moving his car to park
Wasn’t it reported that he was driving the wrong way down a one-way street — (allegedly) intoxicated, besides underage to drink?
BTW, your envy and resentment is nauseating.
At what? Being white, male, and rich? Check yourself.
Maybe we need more news not less.
Perhaps if all DUI’s were reported we’d all be a bit more careful not to drink and drive. I lived in
Europe for years and you always had a designated driver or took public transportation because the penalty was immediate loss of your license. Just remember how many are killed each year
In 2007, there were 12,998 fatalities in crashes involving alcohol.
http://www.alcoholstats.com/page.aspx?id=136
I doubt that simply reporting all DUIs will have much real impact on driving down rates of drunk driving in the U.S. And I doubt that Europe’s more responsible culture of drinking stems from a past practice or a present threat of reporting all DUIs. I think the differences have more to do with our cultures than they way our media operate.
I think the differences have more to do with our cultures than they way our media operate.
I concur.
Parents there teach their teenage kids about drinking, and then society offers practical out-of-house and legal experience with alcohol at an earlier age than we do.
And then they have available to drinkers a network of reliable public transport to get them home.
We Americans are dumb-headed and prudish about drink to our own extreme detriment.
I think “Bloom” is a petty, bitter little person w/ nothing better to do than pedantically post the same freakin’ thing twice in a row over a one word error. We knew what you meant, jackass.
I think “Bloom” is
Can’t deal with content of thought, eh? So spoof on an html error? So-called conservatives show their moral bankruptcy in a multitude of ways.
BTW, your envy and resentment is nauseating.
You’re better because you’re white?
No more name-calling. Don’t make me pull this blog over.
As long as you don’t turn it around … I always wanted to go to Disneyland.
Cecil, in England drunk kids rampage on the weekends and even weekdays. I don’t think they have the more responsible drinking culture you refer to.
Just a blog back you all were critical of the DP for their reporting of the news. Not enough local news. Well, this was certaintly local news, which you were all clamoring for. Make up your minds what you want. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Was there an accident? Was there anything more than a dumb college kid who had too much to drink getting pulled over? And how many times a week does that happen here in Charlottesville? Why not report ALL instances?
Because this one’s FAMOUS! Might as well change the name of the blog to CvilleEnquirer.com for this entry because it sure isn’t newsworthy.
Then why isn’t the title of the entry “Kyle Long Caught Drinking and Driving?” Probably because calling him “Howie Long’s Son” would get more attention, right? Probably because you’re average non-sports fan doesn’t have a clue who Kyle Long is. They might GUESS about the last name, but they wouldn’t know for sure.
And if it’s “just” Kyle Long drinking and driving, then most people wouldn’t care, just like they don’t with all the other non-incident drinking and driving cases every year, as they shouldn’t.
If I cared about every college kid in this city that got cited for a non-incident drinking and driving, I wouldn’t have enough of me left to care about anything else.
Face it, Waldo. You jumped on the celebrity bandwagon on this one. It’s okay. We all do it from time to time. You can redeem yourself by a) reporting every drinking and driving incident in C’ville, regardless of fame or b) never reporting this sort of garbage again as if it were news. Seriously, you’re above that.
Actually, you’ll see that what appears on the homepage is “Kyle Long has been arrested for driving drunk.” Vanishingly few people ever see the titles of Sideblog entries. As has been discussed here already, Kyle Long is a well-known athlete, and it’s news when he is accused of committing a crime. The fact that he is well-known shouldn’t prevent that from being news; on the contrary, it’s part of what makes it news. I might not write about a murder, but I’m sure to if the murderer or the victim is well-known. That’s just common sense. Likewise, I might not write about a B&E, but when the perp is a member of UVa’s football team, I’m likely to (and have). In this case, the accused is a well-known Charlottesville college athlete, having been offered dozens of scholarships on the strength of his abilities.
CBS-19 and The Hook also picked up the story, and a half-dozen outlets are reporting on the fact that he’s subsequently dropped out of school. If you figure that it’s not worthy that he was driving drunk, I assume you figure it’s really not newsworthy that he dropped out of school. (Is that right?)
I didn’t see you registering any complaints on prior discussions about members of the UVa football team being arrested for B&E. What’s the difference here?
Let it be.
So why something different for the page title? You have control over that and chose to use Howie Long’s name. Surely for attention. And maybe Google? Google search for “Howie Long Drinking Driving”. Nice. Real nice.
And if everybody else jumps off a bridge…
Just because every other “news” outlet is obsessed with celebrities doesn’t mean you have to be. Your whole line of reasoning for why it’s “news” is that Kyle Long is famous. You said it yourself. And that’s not news, that’s gossip. That’s tabloid. It’s anything but news.
Absolutely correct. I’m sure a lot of local students drop out of college every year. Why is this one different? Oh yeah, because he’s Howie Long’s son. If nothing else, the “news” has to keep us informed of what happens to famous people. (Where’s the rolling eyes emoticon when you need it?)
The difference is that I chose to respond. I don’t always respond to every “news” item because of time, interest, and many other factors. But, in actuality, that one’s probably a bit more newsworthy because local news outlets DO report most, if not all, B&E crimes. It’s an actual crime in which property was damaged and a person’s home and privacy were invaded.
But here we have a kid that got caught driving drunk with no other incident and it wouldn’t be “newsworthy” if he were anyone else.
You’re gossiping and tabloiding on this one, just like all the other “news” outlets. If you choose not to recognize that, so be it. But it doesn’t make it any less true.
By the way, I didn’t see this reported on the site today: http://www.charlottesvillenewsplex.tv/home/headlines/37493514.html Nobody famous, so I guess that makes sense.
I predict he’ll walk with some reduced charge like reckless driving. Whereas the common Joe would be doing the mandatory jail time, have to pay a hefty fine, pony up lawyers fees and have a conviction on his record ’til the end of time. It’s the way things are these days…just ask Bernie Madoff.
Having been the victim of a B&E and the victim of a drunk driver, I’ll take the former over the latter any day. My car was totaled, I was in the hospital, and I was in pain for a long time.
Anyhow, we’re not going to agree on this. I believe that when well-known people do unusual or interesting things, that’s often newsworthy. (And it’s even bigger news when their relatives are also famous.) Why? Because the public has demonstrated an interest in them, ergo what they do is more likely to be interesting to them. Some guy cheats on his wife? Not news. That guy is Thomas Jefferson and it was his slave? News. Guy dies of an illness? Not news. That guy is Leroi Moore? News. Girl gets knocked up? Not news. Her mother is running for vice president? News.
If that makes you upset, I’m afraid that neither cvillenews.com nor just about any media outlet is going to make for enjoyable reading for you. Stay away from today’s sports section! It’s all about how a bunch of sports teams performed in competition recently. But—get this—they’re mostly writing about the famous ones. ;)
He’s like nineteen. Jesus.
Having been the victim of a B&E and the victim of a drunk driver, I’ll take the former over the latter any day. My car was totaled, I was in the hospital, and I was in pain for a long time.
Sorry to hear that, Waldo.
A childhood friend was left orphaned by a drunk driver.
Another friend had his brother die in a single-vehicle accident, which was suspected to be underage DUI. (It took a while to find the wreckage and corpse, but the beer cans strewn about.)
Another friend broke his back, but can now walk.
My own injuries and auto damage after a influenced driver caused a pile-up were rather minor, but real; mostly it was an enormous hassle.
It’s a real crime.
All of these accidents were within 50 miles of Charlottesville.