Document text
http:// --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Obituaries Weather Archive Hot Topics Forum Photo Gallery Past Readers Polls Revels Etcetera Backpage O-Zone Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Online Games Movie Preview October 7, 2006 Murders not among news that is fit to print By Ellen Barry Los Angeles Times MILLERSBURG, Pa. — All week, in Amish communities around Nickel Mines, it was possible to see journalists in a hurry. Television producers strode down country roads, yakking on cellphones; reporters clustered around mourners; photographers with zoom lenses clambered onto cars, hoping to luck out and capture an embrace. So it was notable that Elam Lapp, the editor of the weekly Amish newspaper Die Botschaft, had such an air of calm. When the Oct. 9 edition of Die Botschaft arrives in the mailboxes of its subscribers next week, they will find the kind of news they have come to expect: news of pitchfork accidents and appendectomies, tame foxes and the corn harvest, newborn babies and painful fishing experiences. Although the Oct. 16 paper will reflect the loss of life in Nickel Mines, where a man burst into a one-room schoolhouse on Monday and shot 10 Amish girls, killing 5, Lapp hopes not to devote too many column inches to the incident. Long-standing policy at Die Botschaft prohibits the publication of stories about murder, as well as stories about war, love or religion. "We might mention that it happened," said Lapp, 53, an Old Order Amishman who edits the paper from his family farm. Amish newspapers are not like our newspapers. Die Botschaft, which has a circulation of 11,000 across the country, is written not by reporters, but by 600 unpaid Old Order Amish and Mennonite "scribes" who write down happenings in their communities. The category of information that we consider news — crime, dissent, politics, warfare, disaster — is absent. Never has this contrast been more pointed than this week. Lapp is a daily reader of The Harrisburg Patriot-News, so he knows the details of Charles Carl Roberts' attack on the schoolhouse — for instance, that he shot each girl in the head, execution-style, with a 9 millimeter semiautomatic handgun. But Lapp sees no reason to pass this information on to his readers, who need, above all, to forgive and move on. "Soon it's going to drop out of the scene," he said. "It's really not important to point out all the knickknack items." When letters come in referring to a gunman, for instance, "we just talk about the tragedy in the schoolhouse," he said. "We don't want to get into too much talk about gunmen." A typical edition of Die Botschaft — a Pennsylvania Dutch term meaning "The Message" — consists of 50 to 80 pages of chatty letters sent in from rural outposts. There are no pictures, so each page is a solid block of text. But that does not slake the enthusiasm of Die Botschaft's subscribers, who pay $32 a year and pore through it for news of their scattered families. Letters in the Oct. 2 issue described Eli Gingerich's cataract operation and the difficulty of drying clothes outside when it is raining. A scribe from Monticello, Mo., wrote this: "Levi Stutzman had a bout with a big, mad male hog. That knocked him down, ripping his arm open with his tusk. They, with the help of a neighbor, took him down and gave him an attitude adjustment, also cutting his tusks off." From Clearbrook, Minn., came the news of Aunt Rhoda Sturgis's cancer and the adorable behavior of Ida Stutzman, 2, who "emptied a box of apples at Dannie J.'s where the women had work day, crawled into the box and fell asleep. Grandma thinks that was cute and thinks Grandma Stutzman would think it cute too." Death is recorded, but not dwelt upon, as in the case of Emanuel King, a 12-year-old hit by a car on Sept. 24 while riding his scooter: "His birthday was in November, so he didn't get to be a teenager," wrote a scribe from Paradise, Pa. "Oh, how soon one's plans can change and we think of yous so much. He was our son Allen's age, and only two months younger. Guess that's why it hit us so much! Keep looking up! "On Sunday, we had a very relaxing forenoon at home, then in the afternoon went to Merv and Ada Marie Lapp to see the precious bundle, Anna Marie." Elam Lapp runs the business and oversees a staff of seven. Like all mature Old Order Amish men, he is bearded; he wears his gray hair long and in a bowl cut. At an outbuilding down the hill from his farmhouse, he has laid out templates for the Oct. 16 edition, pasting up advertisements for quilt batting, homeopathic remedies and buggy repair services, among other products. Die Botschaft is printed and mailed out on Mondays; because of the ban on electronic equipment, the editorial process is a bit tortured. Every week, Lapp receives about 400 letters in the mail, and then sends them out to non-Amish (or "English," as the Amish would have it) employees to be typed. Lapp edits the galleys and returns the texts to his English colleagues, who take them to the printer. By the time the news reaches subscribers, it is one to two weeks old. Lapp said he rarely has to edit out objectionable material, although typographical errors, he said, "can create words not fit to express." And this week he did red-pencil a section of a letter from an elderly correspondent in Thompsonville, Pa., who described in remarkably vivid detail the 1889 murder of an Amish man, Christian Yoder, at the hands of a "vicious robber gang." Discussing the scribe's lapse, he caught the eye of his 15-year-old son, Chester, who works for him as the newspaper's advertising sales representative. "Her lamp must be getting thin," Lapp said, and they both cracked up. Lapp has 11 children. As he talked, his 5-year-old daughter, Miriam, was sitting beside him, drawing with a black marker. She had two teeth coming in, and her hair was parted in the middle and pinned in a tiny, gold-blond bun at the back of her head. Every time she turned to her father, interrupting him, he stopped what he was saying, smiled at her and answered. When Lapp returned to the subject of the killings, it was as if a weight descended on him. He knew a lot about them. His brother, who lives near Nickel Mines, had attended viewings of the girls' bodies and left a message on Lapp's voicemail (he has a phone for his business, although, in accordance with Old Amish law, there is none in his home). The voicemail described the scene inside the schoolhouse in such awful terms that Lapp erased the message "because I really didn't want anyone to hear it." "I felt sick after listening to the message," Lapp said. "There are facts that we really don't want to repeat." It was hard to disagree with him. Four days after the murder, the facts of the case had already been repeated to numbness. There seemed nothing more to say about Roberts' malignance, or about the vulnerability of 10 small girls in pinafores, lined up for execution. And yet the reports kept going out from Nickel Mines, in every gory detail, beaming out to every corner of the world. Once heard, the details of the crime stick in the head and are hard to banish. What a relief it will be, then, for a reader of Die Botschaft to open the newspaper next week and learn that the goldenrod is blooming, that the corn is tasseled and turning brown, that the trees in the apple orchard are heavy with fruit. Lapp has just begun to receive the letters for the Oct. 16 edition of the newspaper. So far, they are shorter than usual. People do not feel like writing, he said. "I even have a problem with a pen right now," he said. "Paper will hold still for anything you write on it. In such a grieving time now, it really concerns me of writing the right things, so you don't hurt somebody." Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising Inkjet Printers Student Loans Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Advertisement: Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.