There is no journalistic work more deserving of the designation
"story" than news of crime. From antiquity, the culture of crime
has been about the human condition, and whether information comes
from Homer, Hollywood, or the city desk, it is a bottom about the
human capacity for cruelty and suffering, about desperation and
fear, about sex, race, and public morals. Facts are important to
the telling of a crime story, but ultimately less so than the often
apocryphal narratives we derive from them.
The Culture of Crime is hence about the most common and least
studies staple of news. Its prominence dates at least to the 1830s,
when the urban penny press employed violence, sex, and scandal to
build dizzying high levels of circulation and begin the modern age
of mass media. In its coverage of crime, in particular, the popular
press represented a new kind of journalism, if not a new definition
of news, that made available for public consumption whole areas of
social and private life that the mercantile, elite, and political
press earlier ignored. This legacy has continued unabated for 150
years. The book explores new wrinkles in the study of crime and as
a mass cultural activity--from exploring the private lives of
public officials to dangers posed by constraints to a free
press.
The volume is prepared with the rigor of a scholarly brief but
also the excitement of actual crime stories as such. Throughout,
the reader is reminded that crime stories are both news and drama,
and to ignore either is to diminish the other. The work delves
deeply into current problems without either sentimental or trivial
pursuits. It will be a volume of great interest to people in
communications research, the social sciences, criminologists, and
not least, the broad public which must endure the punishment of
crime and the thrill of the crime story alike.
General
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