Focusing the Sun-Times
Dantrell Davis and the throes of the CHA dominated the front page of the Sun-Times for ten straight days. Even when the lead story was about something else, the paper worked Dantrell in. A page one dedicated to the huge Democratic rally in the Loop carried a box that said “‘We owe it to Dantrell Davis. We have an obligation to the children who cry themselves to sleep at night out of fear because our streets are so dangerous.’ –Bill Clinton.” And a front-page political story began: “With the city pondering how to curb wanton violence in the wake of the shooting of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis at Cabrini-Green, the U.S. Senate nominees clashed over crime in their final debate Thursday.”
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The paper held the mayor’s feet to the fire. “For nearly three years, Mayor Daley has dodged responsibility for Chicago’s soaring homicide rate by blaming the federal government for failing to stem the flow of drugs into the United States,” said City Hall reporters Fran Spielman and Ray Long in a piece headlined “Daley’s Finger Points Nowhere: Issues Can’t Be Dodged Any Longer.” And giving its readers an alternative to the corner bar, the Sun-Times invited them to call in and say what they would do as mayor “to stop the killing of our children.”
We last saw “Dantrell’s Legacy” on January 4, fixed to a front-page story on the 1992 murder rate of kids 16 and younger in the city. There’d been 96, with New Year’s Eve still to be sorted out. Six days later the Sun-Times shifted to adjacent ground and unveiled “The Great Divide,” a five-part study of racial attitudes in Chicago. The first installment was six pages long.
As the Sun-Times special-projects editor, Larry Green has clearly been earning his salary. Above Green and even more responsible for the Dantrell Davis coverage is a new managing editor, Julia Wallace. Last September Wallace was hired away from USA Today, where she’d worked ten years and most recently controlled special projects. Say what you will about USA Today, Wallace left there an expert in packaging, which isn’t a bad thing to be as long as you’re conscientious about putting something in the package.
