Suburban high school brawl makes international news

Of course, the headline in the UK Daily Mail is more spicy than any that local media could offer up. The headline from the New York Post is slightly less incendiary:

Minneapolis high school cancels classes after wild allegedly ‘race-fueled’ brawl drew in parents, 2 adults arrested

The Daily Mail and the Post do get one detail wrong in their headlines: the brawl took place in the western suburb of St. Louis Park, rather than inside the city limits of Minneapolis.

The brawl(s) in question took place on Thursday, the Post and the Daily Mail published their pieces today (Saturday). To be fair, the sensational details they include for their audiences had already been published by AlphaNews in a piece posted yesterday (Friday).

Here are a sampling of headlines to be found in the local media:

The Star Tribune’s account of the event(s) is representative of local media. In the journalistic rule of “who, what, when, where, why, and how,” everything except the when and where get short shrift. Out-of-state media give a fuller account.

Consistent with its internal policy, the Star Tribune does not name the two adults who were arrested, as both were later released, without charges. Alternative and out-of-state outlets name names and include mugshots, and videos. The two arrestees were adult females, aged 22 and 41, respectively. By one account, the arrestees were on site after school hours in support of the girl victimized in the original melee earlier in the day.

In a strange twist, both women arrested are the subjects of unrelated arrest warrants on other charges. The younger of the two was wanted on a felony charge. Both were released without first appearing in court.

The contents of “All the news that’s fit to print” appear to vary by location.

According to media reports, the high school reopened Monday morning with additional police presence.