For a story about a the cutting of a medical program that send nurses into the homes of at risk mothers, usually teenagers, and teaching them about prenatal health and infant health, especially about how to avoid SIDS. A program that literally saves babies lives, and it gets eliminated.
On working on this story, the reporter discovered that the mortality rate for African American babies in our area is substantially higher then for white babies. It makes me sick to even think about how this can be. So I proposed to an editor at the paper that this fact seems like a good starting point to do a really in depth series of stories about health and African American children.
The answer was no.
I was told, in a phrase that I won't repeat, that we write about the death of black children often. Too often, in fact, to bring up again or make a big deal out of.
You want to know why the newspaper industry is dieing? Because we deserve it.