As you’ve probably heard, Philly PD Officer John Pawlowski was brutally killed on Friday while trying to stop a robbery in progress. Pawlowski’s death, of course, stings especially as he is the sixth officer to die in the line of duty in 16 months. The story has been all over the place, but it’s here that we have to shame The Metro a bit for using the story as a way to talk about the merits of Facebook for a few hundred words. What? No, really. Stumped for an angle to cover Pawlowski’s death four days in and with no new news breaking on the topic, Metro staffer Brian X. McCrone decided to focus today’s lead story on a Facebook group mourning Pawlowski that accrued more than 10K members over the weekend. All of this, of course, follows a national news trend of reporters trying to wedge Facebook and Twitter into every news story possible, as both have reached the highest heights of buzzword status imaginable. It’s sad, and it’s lazy, and more than anything, it’s just fucking stupid — especially when the Metro didn’t run a link or info as to where donations for Pawlowski’s family could go, and buried a link to the Facebook group itself. So, uh, thanks, Metro — we didn’t know that this Facebook thing had multiple uses.
Update: The Inky never met a bad idea it didn’t like, either. Newsflash to reporters: Every time someone — anyone — dies, the rest of the world now goes looking on Facebook and MySpace literally days before they go to the papers. It’s been this way for literally years now. We just thought you should know.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 3:58 pm.