Dear fellow journalists: This is why you should use #CrashNotAccident
OregonLive.com coverage of Saturday’s fatal encounter.
I spent five years in daily newspapers. I get it. Everyone has an axe to grind; it is not your job to grind their axes for them.
When you use the word “accident” in a story about a man who allegedly decided to get drunk and zoom down an East Portland side street in a pickup truck, presumably getting a nice bounce over the speed bumps right before he killed a 17-year old on a bicycle, some people get upset.
Use “crash” or “collision,” they plead. Not “accident.”
I got these comments myself sometimes after I’d worked weekend shifts at my last newspaper, The Columbian, and for years I ignored them.
