When Does the Tribune Cover Sexual Assault?

"Sex Assault in Lakeview" appears as a top story at chicagotribune.com this morning. A quick scan of the Chicago Police Department's crime database shows that sexual assaults are reported in Chicago almost every day. Quite often we have more than one a day: on March 20, March 17, and March 14, three cases of criminal sexual abuse, just one of 12 categories of sex offenses, were reported in various Chicago neighborhoods. On March 20, for example, incidents of criminal sexual abuse were reported to have occurred at a school on 74th Street (South Side), in a parking lot on 53rd Street (South Side), and in an alley on Mason Avenue (West Side). We've been unable to find any mention of those assaults in the Tribune archives. In fact, we found no mention in the Tribune of 16 incidents of criminal sexual abuse reported to Chicago Police from March 13-March 21, 2006. Why is the sexual assault in Lakeview front-page news at chicagotribune.com, but not the sexual assaults in other Chicago neighborhoods? Hard to say. The Lakeview rape occurred in the 600 block of Addison, just five blocks from Wrigley Field, right in the heart of Wrigleyville, the center of the Tribune's profit-generating Cubune culture. When the Tribune reports on certain crimes, does it have the effect of focusing the city's attention on those crimes? Does it have the effect of focusing police attention? Women in Lakeview need to know this creep is on the loose in their neighborhood, but how can anyone deny the same information to women in other neighborhoods?
This is bigger than baseball.