I came across this great article from Truthdig today.  Cultural critic Sheerli Avni notes that Oakland, CA’s homicide rate has gone off the charts in the past couple years, and the experts are sitting around scratching their heads as to what could be the cause.

She writes:

The New York Times recently ran a perplexed piece on the rising tide of killings in Oakland, Calif.  The city’s homicide rate has skyrocketed—from 94 in 2005 to 146 in 2006.  Among youths under the age of 18, it has nearly quadrupled, and exact causes are unclear.  Is it a trend, a coincidence, a sign of a national crime wave?  “Killings Surge in Oakland,” announced the headline. “And Officials Are Unable to Explain Why.”

But consider the article itself, which follows a standard trend-story template: (1) Put a human face on the problem, in this case a 17-year-old boy willing to talk about lost friends and lift his pants leg to display a bullet wound .  (2) Consult law enforcement, university professors and some of the city’s most devoted crime researchers, all of whom offer up their own perspectives on the rising violence.  (3) Synthesize an explanation, which in this case is that there isn’t one.  (4) Quote a few more unhappy locals and close on that human face.

It’s not the fault of the reporter, or even the paper; rather, there’s a tendency to turn to our most vulnerable young people for illustration instead of insight.

Avni goes onto explain how she discovered the culprit - a hyper-potent new strain of Ecstasy known as thizz.  It’s not the “hug drug” of the 90’s rave scene - this new, highly potent form of Ecstasy is essentially speed, and much like “Oakland’s favorite neighborhood bogeyman” crack, kids are using it in force. It is leading them into situations where the other elements at play - poverty, bad schools, access to guns - become literally explosive.

She found this culprit not by journalistic investigation on school grounds or by statistical analysis with the help of her local P.D. but rather by simply listening to kids who are in the thick of it.  It turns out that Avni has been facilitating weekly writing workshops in the Alameda County Juvenile Hall for a regional publication called The Beat Within.In these workshops, she has was exposed to a growing, alarming, but explicitly-clear message from the very youth that have added to Oakland’s homicide rate.  Thizz is the straw that is breaking Oakland’s back, and the people who are in a position to do something about it - police, schools, social networks, churches - don’t even know about it let alone what to do about it.

Great story.  Love it.  Now for the parallel:

• Oakland homicide rate = Changes in the business of sales and marketing
• NYT = Traditional advertising agencies who lack a new way of thinking about critical business situations - using their customers for “illustration rather than insight”
• Avni = Seeking an alternative to the stereotypical
• Ecstasy =  The Industrial Age
• Thizz = The Information Age
• The Beat Within = New media, nontraditional strategic planning, and a belief that customers will have the answers if you only know where and how to listen

I want to be an Avni.