Whatever happened to the Newspaper?

I used to love reading the Post-Dispatch. Then, one time, when I was in the library at Truman State University, killing time between classes, I read that day's copy of the New York Times. I was immediately impressed by the detail the NYTs provided. And, that made the writing much more interesting. Details--in any type of writing--bring that writing to life. It's a no-brainer of a formula. There is something inherently interesting about how many Rubles Raskolnikov has left, how much he spends on bread, and other mundane details that Dostoyevsky takes the time to relate in Crime and Punishment. All of these details serve to place us there.

Now, in the information age, everything is sterilized before being package-delivered to the consumer of information. And, things that are packaged and sterilized, while they may be safe, are much less interesting and often devoid of flavor. News reporters all go to the AP for the same story. When something happens, they go to the talking heads of each party in order to get their press release about it, quote each side, and print it. Where's the footwork? Where is the interest?

Walter Steinmann, my granfather and his brother Edward, once made the front page of the Post-Dispatch. Times were certainly different back then, but then again, the reporting was much more interesting than anything you would get in the Post-Dispatch today. Here is the article from Thursday, November 15, 1934:

Two Caught, One Shot, in Burglary of Filling Station

Brothers Prevent Fifth Robbery in Two Months at Chambers and Bellefontaine Roads.

Aroused By Alarm in Nearby Home

Walter Steinmann Fires Through Door – Edward Nabs Men as They Flee Through Window.

The Burglar alarm buzzer in the bedroom of Walter and Edward Steinmann rattled noisily at 2 o’clock this morning, awaking the brothers and sending them out, hastily dressed, to thwart the fifth burglary in the past two months of the Steinmann filling station at the northeast corner of Chambers and Bellefontaine roads.

With shotguns ready, they crept up on the darkened station, 100 yards from the house. Firing through a door glass, Walter Steinmann shot a man who was taking cans of oil down from a shelf, while Edward, in a quick flank movement, took up a station on the other side of the building and captured the wounded man and his companion as they fled.

The captured men said they were John Laird, 22 years old, an unemployed laborer, who was struck in the right shoulder by about 60 pellets, and Fred Harper, 28, a laborer. Laird gave an address in the 5200 block of Natural Bridge avenue, Harper an address in the 5600 block of North Broadway.

In the station near an open window were found a sack containing candy, cigarettes and cigars, taken from the counters, and 10 cans of oil. An automobile which Harper was quoted as saying was his, was parked on Bellefontaine road near the station.
Arrived Too Late Week Ago.
“We’ve got the burglar alarm to thank,” Walter Steinmann told a Post-Dispatch reporter. “I had it put in about a month ago after we had been robbed twice within a couple of weeks. More than two weeks ago we were robbed again because there was a loose connection in the alarm and it failed to work. Then, a week ago last Sunday, the station was robbed. The alarm went off but when I got there the burglars were running away. I fired two shots at them but it looks like no one was hit.

“Early this morning the alarm went off. Ed and I jumped out of bed, got into some clothes and each took a double-barreled 12-guage shotgun. I went out the back door and up to the east side of the station and Ed went out the front, on the road side.

“When I got up to the back door I looked in and there, under the night light, was a fellow taking down oil from the rack. I aimed through the glass of the door and let him have it. He ran into the next room, where, it turned out, there was another fellow working on the cigars and cigarettes.
Climbed Out Window

“Both of them climbed out a window but Ed was there and he yelled for them to halt. The wounded man started across the road but he came back when Ed hollered at him again, and we had them both.”

The filling station is owned by August Steinmann, father of the brothers, and is operated by Walter Steinmann, who is 32 years old. Edward, 34, is employed as a collector by the Laclede Gas Light Co.

An examination of the station showed it had been entered by a cellar window, not wired to set off the burglar alarm. The buzzer began to sound, however, when the window on the ground floor was opened, apparently in preparation for moving the loot of the burglary.

Warrants charging second degree burglary and larceny were issued this afternoon against Laird and Harper, who were quoted by deputies as having made written statements of guilt. Justice of the Peace Lewis set bond at $5000 each.