Why did Simon and his family feel it was necessary to leave Omaha in the novel, Simon Sort of Says?

Throughout the early parts of the novel, Simon establishes that his family’s reason for leaving Omaha is because of the constant demands of reporters looking for a story. In their attempts to continue the byline, reporters present Simon as a perpetual victim, reducing him to a series of pictures from the worst time of his life. It is not until a news van arrives at his home in Grin and Bear It, however, that Simon really dives into the toxicity of the media. Not only do they decide what Simon’s life is going to be defined by, but their obsession with a story shows how dehumanizing the news can become. Instead of telling the student’s stories and letting the family’s greed, reporters become obsessed with getting the scoop that no one else has. Simon says, “They bothered my mom at the funeral home, and they bothered her even more when they figured out that she [was] the mom- the one who had the kid who didn’t die. My dad, of course, who was helping to plan the funerals for my friends who were Catholic, because that was his job-he became the dad. And I was the kid… We were the story” (234). If reporters ignore the lives and feelings of those those in the stories they are telling, they create a toxic cycle that reduces people to nothing more than the things they have gone through.