Language in The Beatrice Daily Express
For this project, Arson is analyzed and studied. There were three main terms searched to obtain data, which were 'Arson', 'Firebug', and 'Incendiary'. Arson articles were on average about 155 words and median of 139 words. The longest article was 433 words, titled "Work of Peoria Firebug", detailing a mysterioud serial arsonist, and the shortest article was a 10 word court transcript stating that two men were charged with arson. Majority of arson crimes are reported on the first or second page of the newspaper, with the average article being about on the second page of the paper.
Larger cases, such as ones covering serial arson or a juvenille offender, are often sensationalized and embellished, often times including unnecessary details unrelated to the crime occured. As mentioned previously, trends in how The Daily Express reported arson shifted to be even more sensationalized than they already were. Though the main purpose of The Daily Express may be to inform readers of newsworthy events, there are still sensationalized aspects to this paper. In a 1919 article entitled "Church Deacon by Daylight, Efficient Burglar at Night" in which a sensationalized story of a burglarizing church deacon set fires to the places he robbed, in which the paper reported him as "a bank robber, stick-up man, porch climber and all around efficient burglar", making him seem more of a folklore hero than a suspect to a series of violent crimes.