POPULAR COMO FACEBOOK PAGE: Returns after 30 days in "jail"

CoMo Schnucks lot, TRCM"That was a loooong 30 days!"


COLUMBIA, Mo 10/13/24 (Beat Byte) -- A popular Columbia Facebook page that takes a modern-day approach to old school photojournalism has returned after a thirty day hiatus with a well-known name: "Facebook jail."

Removed with neither trial nor jury after posting videos of fighting students at Battle High School, The Real Columbia Missouri (TRCM) had amassed fifteen thousand followers and Likes in what may be record time: roughly a year. But while the 30-day jail sentence was tough enough, Facebook enacted a harsher penalty, repossessing those followers and forcing the page's administrators to start from square one.

On the bright side, TRCM is on pace for another follower record: from zero to eighteen hundred in just two days. Follower comments reflect excitement -- and relief.

"Made my whole day. Can’t believe you got deleted though smhhhh," posted Amy.

"Glad you are back! We will get your followers back!" said Rachel.

"Thank God…. You have been missed," wrote Ashley.

"That was a loooong 30 days!" Colleen said

"It's about damn time. WELCOME BACK!" said Dan.

"We earned that tear drop," a TRCM page admin said about a comment emoji, following dozens of "thank yous for waiting."

A 21st century version of an American journalism classic -- the muckraker -- TRCM follows the footsteps of early 20th century photojournalists like Jacob Riis and reporters like Upton Sinclair.

Riis used hard-hitting photos to depict the terrible conditions of urban slums, angering those who wanted to look away while forcing policy makers and bureaucrats to look up from their desks and take action.

Sinclair used the written word to illustrate other social ills the nation did not want to see. In the muckraking masterpiece The Jungle, Sinclair recounted the deplorable working and sanitary conditions in American meat packing plants.

TRCM and other well-known Facebook pages such as Seattle Looks Like Shit and Welcome to Shittsburgh use social media to muckrake, focusing on America's newest and possibly most widespread social illness: a rising homeless population with many causes and one highly-visible effect, countless suffering human beings in open spaces and public places.

Homeless children, Jacob RiisReader comments offer an instant feedback the country's early muckrakers never got, from poking fun at the crisis to condemning its coverage to acknowledging the pain. But while the remarks may vary, the impact is clear and the message getting out: local leaders, pay attention, get engaged, and start working to resolve this crisis instead of shoving it into corners where it's harder to see.

A longtime friend of President Theodore Roosevelt back to the days when Roosevelt was New York City police commissioner and an avowed police reformer, the photojournalist Riis received a tribute from Roosevelt after he was elected.

"Recently a man, well qualified to pass judgment, alluded to Mr. Jacob A. Riis as 'the most useful citizen of New York'. Those fellow citizens of Mr. Riis who best know his work will be most apt to agree with this statement. The countless evils which lurk in the dark corners of our civic institutions, which stalk abroad in the slums, and have their permanent abode in the crowded tenement houses, have met in Mr. Riis the most formidable opponent ever encountered by them in New York City."

Fifteen thousand people feel the same way about The Real Columbia Missouri 120 years later.