Death is a universal subject of news and story. And murder has always been a particularly interesting form of death. It has been a topic of news as long as news has existed. Since the development of newspapers, murder, arguably, has been their most consistent and persistent item of news.
Murder sustains the interest of news and fiction audiences, and its stories and forms have changed in the Twentieth Century. But the foundations for all the articles in the news now were created in the ballads, broadsides, and early newspapers. What has occurred since the 1700s in the United States has been a refining, redefining, and restructuring of the forms that carry familiar messages. The murders, except for variances in weapons of choice, have remained relatively constant.
The ways of telling have varied according to social and cultural influences, journalistic conventions, and personal convictions and interests of editors and reporters. Looking at more than a hundred years of sample periods of a single paper, the Hartford Courant, one finds that coverage of murder reflects the cultural, social, and physical environment. In the early decades, story-like descriptions of murder were accompanied by other violent deaths resulting from a harsh environment, many attributed to the retribution of an angry God. In the early to late 1800s, writers described murders in sometimes revolting detail, at first attributing deaths to mans dark nature, and then to mans weak nature. By the Civil War period, most violent accidental deaths were attributed to machines, explosives, and other evidences of the industrial age. Near the end of the century, Courant reporters covered death as a mystery, constantly putting fourth their *theories* as to what may have happened and why. And while the study cannot be taken as a general timeline of death coverage, the paper began to emphasize trials and the bureaucratic machinations resulting from the crime, rather than the crime itself.
Following these changes tells us about our society and culture, about journalism and the people who work in it, and about ourselves
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