Read on Twitter
The @jeremykohler story on the St. Louis gun couple is great but the graf on why there’s no comment from the gun couple illustrates something important about how journalism’s collapse and why robustly reported pieces like it are growing scarce 1/tk
Classic rich person lawyer vs. public’s right to know playbook. Absurd semantic claims (how could litigitation about property disputes not be relevant for people internationally famed for exuberantly defending property during a dispute not be relevant? ) and running out the clock
Running out the clock is key. The graf is the product of hours of work. Maybe a full day. It keeps a journalist frustrated & busy. They’re not filing anything. Editors get impatient. The paper’s no doubt running on a skeleton crew struggling to fill a news hole
The gun couple have faded a bit from the public conscious by now. People are tweeting about other stuff. The urgency for dredging up their court history is waning. An editor might decide the time investment isn’t worth it.
In the hours spent in the rigamorole with the lawyer alone, Kohler could have written three-four stories from police reports, press releases or social media aggregation. The gun couple’s crafty, mean spirited use of courts would stay secret.
Fucked up a sentence in the second tweet. Picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. My apologies
