Courier whacks Plainfield again?

(Photo, Courier News)

On Sunday, the Courier ran a long front-page story on a renewed community-oriented policing (C.O.P.S.) push by the City, using UEZ monies (see "City hopes police patrols draw business").

The gist of the story is that -- once again -- Plainfield is making a push for cop-on-the-beat policing in its two major business districts, Downtown and South Avenue. Merchants are quoted as saying that business traffic suffers because "there is this idea that Plainfield is unsafe," again an old story.

What caught PT's attention was the photo the Courier used to illustrate the story (see above). What was on the editor's mind?

To begin with, the photo is quite at odds with PT's experience of downtown as far as SHOPPING goes.

Plainfield's downtown -- where almost all of the foot traffic is -- is FULL of shoppers during regular store hours. In fact, PT went out Sunday afternoon to check it out. There was not a parking spot to be found between Madison and Roosevelt Avenues, or on Park Avenue from North Plainfield to the railroad tracks, nor on North Avenue! The area was full of families shopping, women pushing strollers with little ones, and modishly attired teens -- all bundled against the freezing weather. The Supremo and Twin City parking lots were jammed with Sunday shoppers with the usual chaotic situation near the exits as people loaded their groceries into their vehicles. Oh, and did I mention men?

Yes, there are men downtown shopping. But these are not the men in the photo. The men in the Courier photo appear to be mostly daylaborers waiting for work near the McDonald's at Front and Madison.

Two things need to be pointed out --

First, the photographer used a telephoto lens, which flattens the depth of field. Behind the lamppost in the left foreground is the fencing in front of McDonalds (at Madison Avenue). The building at the rear of the photo (with the rows of second floor windows) is at the corner of Park and East Front -- perhaps 800 to 1000 feet away. The effect is to compress everything in between as if it were occurring in a very shallow space -- making the people look like they were a crowd when they were actually spaced out in little clusters many feet apart from each other. And the people appear to be all men, which may be typical of the space in front of McDonalds at a certain time of the morning, but is NOT reflective of the downtown shopping experience generally.

Second, in PT's opinion, using a photo like this to illsutrate a 'shopping' story sends a subliminal message that if you come to Plainfield to shop you are going to have to run what appears to be a gauntlet of men. The photo is like a TAT test -- using a vague but provocative image capable of having a 'story' made up to explain it depending on the viewer's emotional state. So, if you're already fearful of shopping in Plainfield, this photo would tend to reinforce that fearfulness rather than challenge it, as PT sees it.

Far more effective, in PT's humble opinion, would be to use a photo that would induce a feeling of cognitive dissonance in the viewer -- in which the subject matter portrayed challenged an emotion (fear) or misconception (unsafe conditions) about downtown Plainfield possibly held by the viewer. Such a photo would NOT have to be FALSE -- that is, staged à la Leni Riefenstahl -- but just a photo of ACTUAL SHOPPERS. Which, to PT, would be the HONEST thing to do.

Go read the Courier story again and look at the picture again. If you feel like making a comment on the story, why not check out PT's post of last week on how to use the Courier's new StoryChat feature (see "Join the Courier moshpit") and go back to the story and make a comment for all the world to see.

Meanwhile, PT has more thoughts on the COPS initiative, but that will be another post.


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