Monday

Daniela Lekhno was one of the students from Boston University who lost her life in a minivan crash in New Zealand May 11, 2012. Because she was from Brooklyn, the Daily News ran an article about her death. In the article headlined “Brooklyn-raised student among three Boston University students killed in New Zealand wreck” Matthew Lysiak, Jennifer H. Cunningham and Rich Schapiro wrote:

A Brooklyn-raised beauty was among three Boston University students killed Saturday in a horrific minivan wreck in New Zealand.

Daniela Lekhno, 20, and two fellow students studying abroad died instantly after their vehicle flipped over near the vacation town of Taupo about 7:30 a.m. (source)

What I don’t get is why there’s a need to point out that she was beautiful. She was a young girl who lost her life in a horrific crash. Her being beautiful doesn’t make her death more tragic and doesn’t need to be pointed out in a news article. It seems completely inappropriate and appears to be a conscious editorial choice they make, as they tend to do this quite a bit when writing about the deaths of beautiful young women. I first noticed it in 2008 in the articles they wrote about Laura Garza, the aspiring dancer who had moved from Texas to New York to pursue her dreams which were cut short when she made the unfortunate choice to leave a night club with sex offender Michael Mele who killed her. They were overkill with the adjectives describing the beauty of Ms. Garza as if they might never have bothered writing about her had she not been beautiful; and I’ve seen it in subsequent Daily News articles, so there’s definitely intentional pattern behind it. Just what the goal of achievement is that’s anybody’s guess.