Lessons Learned from Annie Le

If you’ve read any news blogs or even watched a televised newscast in the last week and a half, chances are that you’ve heard the tragic story of Annie Le, the Yale grad student who disappeared ten days ago. Her body was found hidden inside a wall at the building where she worked last Sunday—which was to have been her wedding day. Now a lab technician named Raymond Clark has been charged with Annie’s murder.

This whole saga has been unbelievably upsetting and awful, and our hearts go out to Annie’s family and her fiancé. It’s also spurred a lot of interesting discussion about safety on college campuses—and why the media is curiously fascinated by crimes that occur on Ivy League campuses.

Slate editor Jack Shafer observes that the New York Times has written five stories about Annie’s case so far, while the Boston Globe has run at least six. A quick search shows that CNN.com has a whopping 14 stories about the murder. The media frenzy has been so… well, frenzied that an NBC producer was trampled when journalists and camera-people rushed to speak to a New Haven police spokesman on Tuesday. Read More »