Popular Crime: Local Violence Attracts an Online Crowd

Tulsans love their crime news. 

We draw that broad conclusion based on an informal survey of the top ten stories in the "Most popular stories" list on the Tulsa World website, which is invariably loaded with a variety of shootings, beatings, robberies and other violence acts. 

Just today, for instance, eight of the top ten stories on the list were local crimes and another was a Texas shooting. Only one story of the top ten was non-crime related, a story on the rise of the West Nile virus.

True, crime has long been a staple of the news business. It's often interesting and, more importantly, people do need to know about the violence in their neighborhoods. But the popularity of crime news in Tulsa also says something about Tulsans, who can't seem to get enough of bar brawls, meth lab busts and the like.

We prefer to think about finer things. Sure we do. (Hey, did you hear about the fight last night between these two drunks…)