True Crime’s Area 51 Podcast

On this week’s episode of The Index we cover ground from high school sports to capital punishment to Bari Weiss’ possible takeover of CNN. And, “The Drop” a sequel to “Snowfall” has premiered. We tease next week’s deep dive into the era of Los Angeles when crack cocaine drove politics, crime and news coverage.

Coaches are losing their grip on players, and the players are beginning to act as if they’re in a video game. And all of that kind of comes together to be a celebration of violence like it was episodic TV. But, it’s something that a lot of people don’t want to see when it comes to football.

That said, the Los Angeles Raiders were successful precisely because they were an embodiment of countercultural values.

J. Brian Charles substack, mentioned this week, is

Converse Apologizes

Just Sports

Covering the White House

T2 Trailer

An editorial board was never “the newspaper’s opinion.” It was the last place a paper said, out loud, “we know this town and we will pick a side on a library bond, who should be the D.A. or who should sit on the school board.

And, it was contemplative. Basically, it took time to develop an opinion. Editorial boards often spoke up after news was reported. Now, news and opinion often happen at the same time.

Endorsements were alway radioactive. In some cases they alienated 50 percent of readership. But editorial baords carried institutional memory. They knew who was the county supervisor and why a gadfly might not make a good candidate.

Maybe someone somewhere is cranking out the obituary for print newspapers. But, if we’re being honest, this is a requiem that should have been in the can years ago. Newspapers are slowly circling the drain.

They had a good run.

News in Los Angeles is event driven. You know, there’s a press conference today. Everybody runs to the press conference. There is a shooting.

There’s a celebrity involved in something, everybody runs there. That’s the way news is driven ad reported here. On Tuesday there was a bus and a car that collided up in the Chatsworth area of the San Fernando Valley and it was fatal. And as often happens, helicopters from around the area, police helicopters and television helicopters went to capture his event, live, for their audience.

During the televised reporting of the fatal accident, one of the helicopters went down. The event was captured on live television as stunned anchors attempted to explain the unexplainable. Helicopter pilot George Marciniw and reporter, Eliana Moreno, who worked at NBC4 died in the firey accident. Also killed was a bystander who sadly was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Moreno was a beloved figure in Los Angeles. She will be missed by many. And, not just here, People around the country know her for her play-by-play on car chases and developing crime stories. She had a smiling social media presence that transcended the day-today traffic and crime that probably made up a lot of her job.

We sometimes forget that journalists, even those that are up in these helicopters, are constantly putting their lives and their safety in danger. Reporters go to riots, people shootings. These are people often on the frontlines of wildfires.

Sometimes I think we’ve lost that respect for that part of the profession, because we focus too much on the opinion part of what a publication or news station seems to believe. And it’s good to kind of step away from that and separate it and remind people real reporters, and the opinion folks run in separate circles.

So as authorities begin to piece the accident together, we will offer a heartfelt Rest in Peace to Eliana and George and the others killed in the vehicle collision and to the bystander killed by the falling news helicopter. Let’s hope that their grieving families will see an outpouring of respect from the rest of us on the sidelines.

Journalists and writers Frank C. Girardot and J. Brian Charles focused on the news of the week in this edition of the Index. Not only did one of the Great Lakes get a name change, so did pop star Miley Cyrus and maybe soon the Los Angeles Angeles will return to glory as the California Angels. The 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur was back in the news this week, with a verdict in the murder trial and some questions about journalism and journalism ethics. Finally a look at prediction markets and how a bet on gambling might have paid off.

Biggie, Tupac and the murder trial that briefly brought 90s gangsta rap back to live.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in. Join us next Wednesday for another installment.