We’re all so dependent on the internet for research now it’s glaringly evident when internet outages strike news outlets. At least, that’s what I assume is happening at all the various organizations creaming their jeans over R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet” videos but somehow being unable to vouchsafe to their readers the details of Kelly’s legal problems.

What generally happens in cases like this is that the writers create a sort of “boilerplate graf” they can shove into each new story to bring readers up to speed on the background of the subject. This has been missing from virtually all the stories I’ve been reading on Kelly recently.

Like this one and this one and this one and this one.

Also this one and this one.

As I said, I’m thinking it has to do with an inability to do that sort of rudimentary research the internet makes so easy these days; so, since my internet connection, at least, is up, I’d like to help the team by proffering the following background graf gratis to anyone who needs it in their assiduous chronicling of Kelly’s latest project:

Kelly, now 40, has a long and lurid history of sexual involvements with young girls. In 1995 he was found to have married a 15-year-old girl, the singer Aaliyah; the marriage was annulled. In 2002, a tape came to light showing what appeared to be Kelly and a young girl engaged in a variety of sex acts; one involved Kelly urinating on the girl. After five years of delays, he is to go on trial for 14 counts of child pornography in Chicago next month; charges involving having sex with a minor were dropped because the videotape did not show the two having intercourse. Kelley has denied the charges and said he is not the man in the video.

Kelly was arrested in Florida in 2003 for 12 more counts of child pornography stemming from photos in a digital camera found in a house he was renting that showed him having sex with an underage girl. These charges were later dropped after the search warrant used to raid the house was ruled unjustified.

There’s some good background on the Florida case here.

More on the Chicago one here.