Gapers Block has ceased publication.

Gapers Block published from April 22, 2003 to Jan. 1, 2016. The site will remain up in archive form. Please visit Third Coast Review, a new site by several GB alumni.
 Thank you for your readership and contributions. 

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Friday, March 29

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If you picked up RedEye or visited the Trib's website yesterday, you might have been a little freaked out. Your iPod! A potential crime target! Leaving aside that just about anything is a potential crime target, a closer inspection of Alison Neumer's column reveals that, "so far, Chicago Police and the CTA report no noticeable trend of stolen iPods here." So, presumably, the piece was meant to sound a warning bell. Or maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy: "I'd bet thieves will soon tune in to this simple crime." Neumer's apparent sources in the Times and the Post, though, expose her tone as a bit hysterical: despite her claim that iPods are natural "street targets," according to the New York Police Department, "rarely have the iPod thefts involved physical assault." In other words, people, just be aware and, for heaven's sake, ignore most of, in Neumer's words, "the media's disproportionate interest in the story [that] plays off fear more than anything else."

 
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