At 1 a.m. on Saturday, the Mobil “On the Run” store on Post Rd. in Old Greenwich was robbed. The robber shot the Mobil clerk in the head, even though the clerk complied with his demands for cash.
The robbery happened at a location next door to the Greenwich Time office. But as of 4 p.m. Sunday, nearly 40 hours after the robbery, there was no report in the paper either in print or online.
Why?
At first, I thought perhaps, with budget cuts, the “local” daily had no reporters on duty over the weekend to cover such a story. That obviously wasn’t the case, as the paper had reporters cover the opening of the Apple store and Ralph Lauren on Greenwich Avenue, and the Stamford Thanksgiving Parade.
Then I thought perhaps the Greenwich Time didn’t know about the robbery. The paper yesterday proofed that theory wrong when they finally covered the story and printed a photo by their staff photographer of police cars at the scene of the crime. If they send a photographer to the scene to cover it, why not a reporter to write about it?
Didn’t the readers deserve to know about a shooting — especially readers who might think twice about going to a gas station where there has recently been a shooting?
Someone suggested that discouraging people from going to that station, particularly on a Saturday and Sunday (likely the busiest days for the gas station in question), might have been the main reason the paper didn’t cover the story. After all, hadn’t that same station taken more than one full-page ad in the local paper in the prior week? Why upset a significant advertiser? — the theory goes.
That is a bit too cynical for me. But I would like to hear the paper explain itself.
