As will be discussed, the detail in which the murder is described, varies more on the geographic origin of the murder than any other factor. Articles reporting Llcal murders regardless of the year they were published rarely made the front page, often relegated to the third or fourth page, meaning one would have to actively search for them in order to read them, as opposed to being on the front page above the fold where they would serve an identical function to an advertisement for the paper itself. This task, especially in the earliest of studied years, was delegated to sensational out of state murders with unique victims and increased degrees of drama, tragedy, and bloodshed enough to warrant their publication and distribution outside of their immediate area. In this way, out of state murders primarily function as entertainment, like the paper’s pages of fiction, where in state murders reflect the paper’s responsibility to conduct serious journalism. This use of brutal murder as entertainment and as a sales tactic would eventually fall out of favor, just as was declared in Michael Trotti’s The Body in the Reservoir. Of the 11 Out of State murders recorded, six were printed on the front page, and all of those six were printed in the years 1901 or 1902. The two out of state murders printed in 1912 find themselves restricted to pages 6 and 3.

1902 Out Of State Murders

The length of the paper’s articles about murder varied rather wildly, with the longest story coming to 574 pages wherein the brother of a murder victim released a public statement in which he claimed the state had arrested and begun the trial of the wrong man. The paper’s shortest story was, in contrast, only 67 words, announcing the names of those who had been called to form a grand jury who were slated to indict a black woman and her lover in the murder of the woman’s husband. Between these, the average length of an article across all years recorded concerning a murder was 189 words.