January 21, 2004
Reader Writes
Reader Writes
A ScaryNY reader wrote in yesterday to point out an error in one of my link titles (since fixed) and added, "...though I'm not thrilled with your obsession on the scary stuff, what with crime in NYC down and all, but you do a good job of it."
I responded with: "Re: obsession with scary stuff, it's not necessarily an obsession and it's not strictly crime (see latest on the poor woman who was electrocuted while walking her dogs). The original thesis for ScaryNY was that New Yorkers, in general, were over their fear of terrorism and have restored their fear in other scary stuff... getting mugged, hit by a bus, etc. It's a little sick sometimes, yeah, but at the same time I find myself appreciating the people in our city and the hardships they face."
To which he replied: "Fair enough, but I think you somehow need to make that more apparent and at the same time spin your love for it a bit more clearly. Just a thought."
Equally fair enough. I'll tell you, fine ScaryNY readers (all three of you),... it's something that I've been struggling with. For a while. I hate local TV news in general b/c of the whole "if it bleeds, it leads" philosophy. The last thing I want to do is push that thinking online. That's not what I'm trying to do.
New York is a wonderful city, but like any other large metropolitan area, bad things happen to mostly good people. A lot of bad things happened before September 11th and I'm trying to show that bad things continue to happen. I was fed up with reading stories about terror alerts and whatnot and how New Yorkers were afraid of the next terrorist attack. Especially reading this stuff in out-of-town papers. Then after a while, I started seeing more and more quotes from people in our city saying stuff along the lines of, "Hey, what are you gonna do? If it happens, it happens. I'm not going to duct tape my windows or nothing." Hence, ScaryNY was born.
One thing I've been making an effort of, and will continue to try to do more, is leave people's names off this weblog. I don't like the idea of people Googling themselves and coming across a post that isn't exactly flattering. Either because they were the victim or something or other of because they were on the wrong end of the law.
categories:
General
posted by at January 21, 2004 2:23 PM
