Young journalists report tale of tragedy among the even younger
Originally published in Current, March 25, 1996
By Jacqueline ConciatoreLeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman of "Ghetto Life 101" were back on the air March 21, as All Things Considered broke format to present an hour-long documentary reported by the two teenagers.
"I love doing broadcasting," says Jones. But he's not where he wants to be in life. "I'm still in the ghetto." Above: Jones and Newman working with Isay their earlier collaboration, "Ghetto Life 101."
In 1993's "Ghetto Life 101," Jones and Newman, then 13, gave an audio tour of life and hardship in the Chicago projects, introduced their families, and shared their urban adventures.
The program, produced by David Isay and edited by Gary Covino, went on to win a cascade of awards, including the Prix Italia. Last week, ATC cleared an hour for Jones and Newman's new piece, also made with Isay and Covino. "Remorse" used the death of five-year-old Eric Morse to point neon arrows at the violence and pathology that exists in the projects.
Morse died after two older boys, ages 10 and 11, held him out a 14th-floor window and dropped him. Morse's older brother, reportedly unable to hang on to his brother after one of the boys bit his hand, ran down the 14 flights hoping to catch him. Police say the boys killed the five-year-old because he wouldn't steal candy from a local store. Morse had lived in the same Ida B. Wells public housing project where Newman lives, a block from Jones's home.
The two boys who killed Morse were sent last month to juvenile prison, where they must stay until they are 21. At 12 and 13, they are the youngest people jailed in this country.
Police and media said the motive was "a piece of candy," Jones told Current. "I wanted to dig deeper." Newman ticks off a list of Chicago TV stations — "We wanted to get the information they didn't get."
While the two didn't unearth any hard news — and no one would expect them to — they did manage to reach people other reporters couldn't, or probably wouldn't try to reach. Eric Morse's mother and brother gave an interview — the only one they've granted to date. Jones and Newman also talked to one of the young killers' fathers, incarcerated at the time. "They could trust us," Newman says. "They knew we weren't scamming them." Jones and Newman also talked to a brother of one of the assailants, who defends his sibling with his own, second-hand version of what happened in the 14th-floor apartment.
Perhaps most significantly, "Remorse" brought listeners a concentration of voices not usually heard in the media. Jones and Newman interviewed Ida B. Wells residents and others over the course of a year. Their conversations with other children provide some distressing hints about how the murder of the little boy, and the overarching harshness of the children's lives, affects them. In one scene, a boy named Isaac, holding a two-day-old infant, opens the door to the microphone-toting Jones and Newman. He admits to having run around with the boys who killed Morse, and though he's only 11, says he hopes the baby grows to be a "better person" than he himself is. As the two reporters talk to his mother and sister inside the apartment, Isaac gazes out a window; as Jones and Newman depart, he hangs in the doorway.
"You saw how he was about to cry?" Newman asks Jones as they head for the elevator.
Kids like Isaac are"just like M&Ms," Jones answers. "All hard on the outside and all sweet on the inside."
The program is occasionally funny. In one scene in which Jones is interviewing — and holding forth — before a crowd and the Chicago Housing Authority chairman, he asks a small-voiced 12-year-old, "Do you know who this man is standing here? Do you know he's chairman of CHA? The chairman of all of this?," presumably indicating the projects. "What would you like to say to him?" To which the boy replies, "Hi."
Throughout "Remorse," the reporters gradually close in on people who were closest to Morse and his attackers. They locate the head of a local school council who knew the two minors and recalled that the younger one, who is called "Johnny" in the broadcast, once brought a bag of rock cocaine to kindergarten.
Jones and Newman eventually track down Johnny's other family members, who'd moved to another community. Jones is shocked to discover his friend Wade is Johnny's older brother. He had even known Johnny from earlier years' baseball games. "Just a shy, scrawny, light-skinned boy, always trying to act tough. ... It was closer than I imagined," he says.
There is no attempt in "Remorse" to locate meaning in the tragedy. "For somebody on the outside," it may make sense to attempt that, Jones told Current, "but for me, no. I've been living here all my life. I've been saying from day one, they need to do something about this." There are only solutions for the "big things, but not the little things," he said.
ATC Executive Producer Ellen Weiss acknowledges the emotional involvement that is apparent on Jones and Newman's part. "I let them do some things we don't normally let reporters do.... That the story affected the boys is pretty clear. I let them do that because I think they're young journalists, and a different kind of journalist."
"Remorse" also uses music in an exceptional way, for a documentary, Weiss says — though it's not as "self-indulgent" a use of music as in "Ghetto Life", which begins and ends upbeat, with a weave of funk music and talk. "Remorse" is more subtly scored, with the music of jazz saxophonist Frank Morgan.
"It's going to feel bad"
Listeners who remember "Ghetto Life 101" may notice that Jones' and Newman's child's voices are now older and deeper. Gone too are the occasional fits of giggles and unabashed delight the adolescents took in their friendship. But this is a different kind of journalism than the ambling radio verite of "Ghetto Life." In "Remorse," Jones and Newman are after a story, and more earnest about sending a message. "I wish I didn't have to report on life in the ghetto under these conditions," Jones says. "But apparently I do. I want to exploit this to the world."
The world has paid some attention. The New York Times did a piece on the two reporters, and Jones says he's talked to journalists from People, a British newspaper, a Baltimore newspaper, and others. The day before the 4 p.m. airing of "Remorse," Talk of the Nation featured Jones, with Isay. Asked how he feels about having to talk to reporters, Jones admits he's tired of it, and Newman says: "I [am willing to] talk to them if they want to, but not day after day after day."
Reaction to "Remorse," will probably depend on the listeners' perspective, Jones says. "If you're out here trying do something, trying to stop things like this, it will make you want to do more," he says. "If not, if you're just going to work every day, don't pay attention to this side of the street, it's going to be depressing. It's going to feel bad."
So far there is none of the negative reaction "Ghetto Life 101" got from inside NPR and on some Chicago talk shows. The earlier documentary initially aired in the Windy City on a WBEZ series of specials about race.
Critics said "Ghetto Life" exploited Jones and Newman, and perpetuated negative stereotypes about life in the inner city. The program included scenes with Jones's mentally ill mother, Newman's alcoholic father, and Newman's sister talking about gang-related murders. Former NPR reporter Phyllis Crockett, in a memo to management, also suggested Jones and Newman had been coached to express producers' ideas. Crockett had grown up in the same neighborhood Jones and Newman live in.
"We tried to learn from past mistakes," Ellen Weiss says now. Although she firmly stands by NPR's decision to air "Ghetto Life," she notes that the company did not have a dialogue about the program, which came to NPR already complete. "Remorse" was assigned by Weiss, who had been looking for ways to get Jones and Newman back on the air since the first program. This time, Weiss had a dozen people listen to the tape and give her written comments, which she passed on to Isay. These reviewers included people who had felt strongly about the earlier program. "No one said, 'keep it off the air'," Weiss says. "Some said it was funny, poignant or difficult to hear, because of where they came from, but it didn't have any of same problems."
Isay chose Jones for the first documentary from a long list of young people suggested by social service agencies. He wanted to work with Jones as soon as he spoke with him. Jones then suggested his best friend Lloyd as his reporting partner. Asked now about the suggestion he was exploited, Jones says, "It's funny how when you do things, people form opinions." The teens not only won the Prix Italia award money — $10,000, split three ways with Isay — but Jones also landed an assignment to produce a piece about his life for network TV show Day One. "It exploited us to another life, another side of things," Jones says. "If she [Crockett] put it that way, I would agree."
Jones and Newman say they have maintained friendships with Isay for the past three or four years. Isay is currently producing the weekly series Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer, which airs on NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition, and making other documentaries in collaboration with well-known writers. He is also author of Holding On a book based on his radio portraits of unique characters and dreamers.
For their part, Jones and Newman are noncommittal about their futures. Newman says he would love to go into broadcasting, either television or radio, but he also mentions other career options. Jones deflects questions about his future. "I love doing broadcasting," he says. "But people can listen to me and say he's made it. I haven't made it. I made it somewhat. I'm still in the ghetto. I'm not where I want to be in life. But I'm only 16. I could still die a violent death — I could get hit by a stray bullet. I still live here."
Pushed a bit, he talks about maybe going to Harvard or Princeton, and serving as a role model for children in his community. He is already captain of his high school football team, and a spokesperson for the No Dope Express Foundation. Little kids will look at him come back home from an Ivy League school, and it will inspire them, he says. "They can shoot for the top and not grab dirt," he says.
"I want to come back here," he says. "I will have a job. I should have a job. [I'll] start programs, and help these kids out. I won't even state myself as a role model. I'll just come along."
. To Current's home page . Later articles: David Stewart reviews David Isay's work and profiles the producer. . Outside links: Listen to RealAudio files of Ghetto Life 101 and Remorse on SoundPortraits.org website.
Web page posted May 2, 2001
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