WORTH YOUR TIME

People who hate The Media -- and to them it is a monolithic monster, worthy of proper name -- are sadly blinded to the best bits of an admittedly flawed profession. Hatred keeps them from seeing and appreciating storytelling at its best.

So they missed a helluva read in Sunday's New York Times about Gilberto Blanco, shot and killed by a cop outside a Brooklyn church.

Al Baker and Michael Wilson tell the tale and do it well. Two grafs to whet your appetite:

And so the details and echoes of a shooting are set to fade from the city’s memory. A man with no known criminal record and an otherwise invisible life as an immigrant worker is dead, at 46. The officer was treated briefly at a hospital and for the moment has been sidelined with administrative duties.

What was left to show for the last two years of Mr. Blanco’s life fit in a corner of a Bensonhurst apartment’s back room: two laundry bags, a duffel and a cardboard box of DVDs, magazines, a bottle of Old Spice and a toothbrush. He shared the tiny bedroom with a laborer from Guatemala, above a Chinese bakery on 18th Avenue. There was no room on the floor to walk when both of their twin mattresses were laid out. Mr. Blanco paid $225 a month. The people who owned the apartment said they had never learned his name.

Vivid, detailed. Great kicker grafs. Worth your eyeballs.