'Tribune' Reporter Allowed To Go First-Person
Witnessed Thursday's Downtown Shooting
In the midst of the Christmas holiday, everyone's abuzz over the downtown shooting which occurred on the transit mall Thursday morning, and how it fits into the images and reality of downtown.
(Amongst local blog reaction, Jack Bogdanski counters some of the spin, while John Dunshee takes the harsh position. As for the former, Jack of course is right about the need for greater mental health services in Portland, but the paper is also right to point out the survey figures on how people feel about downtown. As for the latter, well, besides Dunshee's charming sentiment, why is nobody crowing disdainfully about the fact that the other guy had a gun?)
But alongside all of this, another interesting development has come along. Jennifer Anderson, police beat reporter for the Portland Tribune, witnessed the shooting and was permitted to write up the story from a first-person perspective.
It isn't often that journalists are allowed to inject themselves into their reporting. While this obviously is an extreme and unique case, where telling the story from her own vantagepoint probably was unavoidable, journalists of course are always actually present at the scene of the events upon which they report.
Understanding that it's dicey to draw generalized lessons from a single specific example, and understanding as well that perhaps a first-person perspective might not be the right approach to all stories, we think it's worth noting that what this incident proves is that such a first-person narrative does not always or inherently detract from the reporting.
In this case, certainly, not providing a first-person account would have been disingenuous. But in many other cases, reporters should be allowed to relate their experience of a story, and not just the usual constructed detachment.
December 25, 2004 at 01:06 AM
My entry about the shooting fell somewhere between the 'compassionates' and Dunshee's. I merged the shooting with the dilemma of the downtown department store. That probably means I wasn't compassionate enough.
In my opinion, the degree of force the gunman used will be the issue, not that he used force per se. Despite the aggressive behavior by the decedent, the accused likely could have escaped without killing him. It would have been reasonable to use some force, but not so much force. I suspect the murder charge will be reduced because the gunman was provoked.
Additonal mental health funding? I'm for it. But, it should be applied to preventive care, before people are living on the streets.
Ironically, Thursday night, I experienced another episode involving a mental health patient. I was waiting for the trolley across from Good Samaritan when a woman came running past with a man in hot pursuit. He was yelling, "Stop her!" "Stop her!" At first I thought it was a domestic violence incident. Then I noticed the woman was wearing a flimsy hospital gown and barefoot. She dodged through traffic across 23rd and made it a few blocks, before being caught. The cop (?) or mental health worker (?) then handcuffed her and shoved her into a vehicle. They drove away from the hospital, leaving me to wonder where. Having to think about two mental health episodes in one day reminded me what a serious problem we have in that area.
August 23, 2005 at 08:07 PM
Just wanted to say that I knew the victim of the downtown portland shooting. We worked together at a local software company until 2001 when most of the company was laid off because of the dot-com crash. Mike, (the victim) a nice person who was easy for me to get along with. I believe that 3 years of struggling to find work contributed greatly to his demise. I think that Mike needed a job much more than he needed mental health services. He was much less of a nut-case than the killer. And I think that any one of us, given the same stresses, may have done alot worse than Mike.
Also, John Dunshee might like to know that Mike was an honorably discharged U.S. Army paratrooper with a degree in philosophy from the University of Oregon. He wasn't just some bum.
And to speak to the gun-issue. I personally have a license to carry a concealed weapon and I think that is a good thing. However, if the killer had a license to carry then I think that is a severe failure of the licensing system to filter out people with mental instabilities. When I took the test to carry a concealed weapon, I felt that it was not nearly as thorough as it should have been. Anybody could have passed it.