January 31, 2006
WNBC TRIES OUT A NEW IDENTIFIER
18-year-old Mariana Edkins was killed a few weeks ago when the car she was a passenger in was struck head-on by a drunk driver traveling the wrong way down a Staten Island street. The 21-year-old responsible now faces a second-degree murder charge, among a raft of other charges. The weird thing about this story as told by WNBC.com, the online site of News Channel 4 here in New York, is that it identifies Edkins primarily as a blogger.
Man Faces Murder Charge In Crash That Killed Teen Blogger
That's the headline of the story above and it's repeated in the article's lede:
NEW YORK -- A young man who told police he had been drinking and was speeding away from another vehicle before his SUV slammed into a car, killing an 18-year-old blogger, was indicted Monday on a second-degree murder charge, prosecutors said.
Not "18-year-old area woman" or "student"? According to another article I read, Edkins was an alumnus of both Staten Island primary and high schools and was a freshman at the College of Staten Island. Her description as a blogger apparently springs from her membership at the personal profile site MySpace.com. I couldn't view her blog without joining MySpace.com, but her personal homepage is here [WARNING: contains automatic playing of a song called "I'm Sprung" by someone named T Pain, which will disturb co-workers]. According to this site, a recent article in USA Today reported that there were recently 47.3 million MySpace members. That's a lot of people. It also makes WNBC's description of Edkins as a blogger due to her MySpace membership akin to describing someone as an e-mail user. But blogs are hot! So anyway WNBC.com can shoehorn the term into a headline to generate some sizzle for a story; it looks like they're ready to do it.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at January 31, 2006 1:00 PM
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