Perhaps sportswriters have a connection to small towns and their culture because most of us have spent at least a few years, or in some cases, decades, in far-flung communities as we tried to move up the ladder to bigger papers. Some sportswriters grew up in those sorts of towns, too.
It's also easier to get the parents to talk about their good kid needlessly lost than their kid who gunned someone down or robbed them with violent force for no good reason at all.
I don't enjoy writing either type of story. I always feel like an intruder into someone else's pain. No matter how many weeks/months a writer spends in a community, the real question is how many will they spend their after publication? It's the nature of our job, but it makes me feel like an asshole.
As for this story, I enjoyed it, although I thought the Wal-Mart/I-5/small-town elements were tired and cliched. Welcome to America...tell me that the sky is blue, already, and get on with the people who are driving the story.
