Story: handle with care

When I picked up the paper Tuesday morning, I saw the headlines and was shocked.\nA young lady had been sexually assaulted in a fraternity house the weekend before.\nThen, being the news man that I am, two thoughts flashed in my head -- 'Why wasn't this the main banner story?' and, for some reason, a commercial for Woolite delicate detergent.\nWoolite is touted in television commercials as the perfect household item to keep your delicate clothes safe. The model in the commercial dons a favored black dress, and to paraphrase her line, she says "a little gray dress just doesn't have the same effect."\nThe parallel I'm drawing has everything to do with little black dresses. Most girls have them, and most guys know someone who does.\nReputations are like black dresses (or suits, for the men). Everyone has one, and if not handled with care, they can become gray and sullen.\nThe business of headline placement in newspapers has everything to do with reputation. Stories involving charges such as sexual assault present a multitude of problems. The public's right to know about crime in the community almost inherently conflicts with a victim's right to privacy. This is why the IDS never runs the names of sex crime victims. But even when nameless, the posterization of one's trauma in a mass medium like a newspaper can be almost as traumatizing as the original act. Not to mention that in a setting like a fraternity party, the victim and the attacker were likely not the only people in the building. That fact takes away any anonymity the victim had in that social circle.\nOther decisions confront the managing editor regarding a story like this -- do I put the story on the cover or the inside? Where do I put it on the page? Will people get the wrong idea if this story goes next to a Martin Luther King feature?\nNews managers turn their hair gray to keep the little black dress of reputation intact. In truth, there aren't any winners, no matter what the manager may decide to do with the story. It's a no-win situation, because the newspaper has to print a horrible story, and the victim certainly didn't win. The community also suffers.\nManaging editor Kelly Phillips said she had a lot of those considerations going through her mind when she decided to put the story where it lay Tuesday morning. She said she compromised between the public's need to know, and the unavoidable pervasiveness of the event. The resulting decision put the story above the fold, but in the right-hand column.\nThat's a lot of thinking done over one story on a front page that featured six.\nThe IDS could have gone another route, putting the story on the inside, effectively hiding the bad news somewhat. That action would have made some people more comfortable, perhaps including the victim, but others would have been beyond outraged at the perceived burial of important information.\nDo however, consider this -- a search of the word 'rape' on www.idsnews.com will bring back over 600 results. Most of the results are false positives, like the words 'grape' or 'scrape.' One result, however, was a story that ran in the fall of 2003. A young woman reported an assault in the night near Goodbody hall.\nHer allegations turned out to be false, but what if she had named a perpetrator? Then even more reputations would be dulled -- the victim's, the accused and the newspaper.\nYou see what I mean by a no-win situation?\nNews coverage is a reflection of the community that generates it. When things like rape happen, no matter how swiftly justice is served, everyone loses -- the newspaper, the victim, and the community.