True Crime Returns?

I recently picked up the True Crime issue of Newsweek. As a pulp magazine historian (snobby sniff), I was interested in seeing what their take on this venerable genre was. The fact that they were even doing True Crime in the first place made me curious. News slicks such as Time and Newsweek have always taken an Olympian tone when it comes to such issues as criminality, preferring to leave the day to day in-depth coverage of such to lesser publishing lights. Since the advent of radio, our news weeklies have taken the tact of being the final word on topical subjects; not so much telling you what happened, but rather what to think about what happened. And thanks to this tactic there are today all of two national newsweeklies. (That count.)

Not that the whole national newsweekly magazine genre was ever all that flush with promise in the first place. It has always been an overly excluding genre: not sports, not human interest, not breaking news, not gossip, not woman’s issues, not entertainment. This leaves them reading like the first draft of an anthropology text book with a dose of travelogue thrown in. For what it’s worth, it’s fine. Time and Newsweek seldom have any real insights to impart, but if you have been spending a week in a cave, reading one of these magazines isn’t a bad way of catching up. Mind you, The Economist does a much better job on that score, if you can get past the funny method it has of expressing itself.

Both Time and Newsweek and even the more specialized news rags have all taken to pushing out ‘stunt’ issues. Time has its Man of The Year, People its Sexiest Man on Earth, US News its College Guide and Sports Illustrated its soft core porn issue. Other than these off the shelf issues, our news magazines are somewhat prisoner of having to have some actual news event to report. Slip sliding away circulation figures indicate that this formula is a death sentence. If actual newspapers can’t make a living just on printing the news, by what remote stretch of imagination should a magazine be able to.

As recounted on our website, there once was a fairly thriving genre of magazines dedicated exclusively to True Crime. Most of these magazines were fairly dubious in nature, but they had a rather long run starting in the 1840s and going strong through the advent of the Zodiac Killer. They only actually disappeared in the 1990s, mostly it seems as a result of an odd spate of media consolidation. (See Real Nazi Sex UFO Man-Eater Cults on our website for more information.) Given that all trends recycle, I had wondered if Newsweek was testing the axe with this issue. Mid August is the silly season for the news, after all.

Although the cover is promising, most of the inside is a standard issue of Newsweek, albeit one without a real lead news feature. That, they got right. As a genre, True Crime is not really meant to be timely. Events such as the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Zodiac slayings and the Manson murders only roll around once in a blue moon. The breadth of True Crime is in the much smaller story, of importance only to the participants and blown out of all proportion with lurid detail. That part, they didn’t get. The magazine reads as if a bunch of pointy heads were sequestered in a room with the words ‘True Crime’ written on the whiteboard and, having failed in a brain storming session, decided to blow in a call to Hollywood types and book press agents for their input.

I would say that they might as well have let them write the issue, because that is almost entirely what they did. There is all of one actual True Crime story in Newsweek’s True Crime issue, ‘My Father The Dope Dealer’ by Tony Dokouph. It’s a very nice story, easily the highlight of the issue, but even here Newsweek misses the point. Dokouph’s piece is actually done in True Confessions style, suitable for True Story. Actual True Crime is done in a mutated version of AP style, not as a personal account. And Newsweek’s misapplication of pulp genres doesn’t end there. Midway through the slim True Crime section, they decide to focus on Noir Detective Fiction. Stretching this oddball tangential relationship to its most tortured degree, they do a feature on a reporter who is attempting to help the police catch a serial killer in quasi noir style. By far, the lowest point of this experiment is James Ellroy’s utterly incomprehensible and deeply meaningless hack one pager on Lily Burk, called The Haunting. Any good True Crime pulp editor would have wadded the thing up and thrown it in his face. Charles Manson of course takes a turn in this issue, but the sole impression one is left with is that the murders took place a long time ago at this point. (I’m sure it was good publicity for the author of Helter Skelter.) Add in a feature culled from a phone conversation with TV megaproducer Dick Wolf, an interesting but off the point splash on mug shots, another internet research one pager on the sale price of crime scenes and it’s a wrap. As for Walter Mosley’s introduction to the section, he might as well have blown his nose on two sheets of paper. It’s that good. Padding the back of the section is three pages on real writers who are doing crime fiction, seemingly written dictation style by press agents.

(It’s not even this illuminating: Why are established writers delving into detective fiction? Because the artsy craze has faded and publishers want to sell books, that’s why.)

As a genre, True Crime is some thin gruel, but it deserved better coverage than this phoned-in effort. For those of you who really want a taste of True Crime, check out any cable channel during the weekend and listen for the sardonic tones of Bill Kurtis. Although there are some other firms in the field, no one today does True Crime better than Kurtis Productions.

This just in: Newsweek’s next issue is on UFOs. The slide into pulp continues.