February 2012
4 posts
Why I'm not naming these sources...
So much of what I do is about naming people. I’ve written before about why it’s important to be first with (an accurate) victim ID. Getting others names, such as suspects, in print is important, too. When you are billing yourself as The Source for information about a given topic, your part of the bargain is that you actually have to have the information.
Which was why it was hard to...
Why Reporting from Analytics Works
In the journalism world, reporting from analytics is my party trick.
Today, it’s Chris’ trick; he’s giving a talk about how I do it at NICAR this morning. And while I wish I could be there, the distance has me thinking a little deeper about why reporting from analytics works.
(You can read about the method, and see my examples, here.)
As newsrooms “do more with...
The future of advertising — and media — in one... →
Editing is Harder than I Thought
I owe the world’s biggest belated thank you to the editors who coached me through so many stories, deadlines and beats before I went indy. In the past three months I’ve learned that, contrary to what many reporters think, editing is one of the hardest jobs in the newsroom.
So, however late it is, I bow down before all the editors who have made me who I am.
Now. Here’s why...
January 2012
14 posts
Are Journalism Awards Stuck in the Print Era?
That photo that I just posted? That was one entry for a journalism award.
The entry itself is 45 pages. The award organizers requested six copies. The 270 pages that I printed for this award certainly gave my printer a workout. And because a cab to and from the organization that’s sponsoring this competition is probably cheaper than dropping the whole thing in the mail, I’m going to...
Milestone: 2M Pageviews
Homicide Watch DC hit a milestone this weekend: in 16 months we’ve recorded over 2 million pageviews.
Pop the champagne!
It’s notable that more than half of those pageviews were in the last four months, coinciding with our relaunch at the end of August.
I was out most of this past week and am going to have to spend part of next playing catch-up on work, but one thing on my to-do...
What We've Learned
Last night Chris and I presented our work with Homicide Watch at ONA DC’s meetup. I was thrilled to see that the lessons that we’ve learned along the way ring true for so many others as well.
I heard later last night that our final slide, an overview of our big start-up independent tech newsroom take-aways, was helpful for many people.
So, here are our biggest lessons from the past...
#ONADC Talks @HomicideWatch
As a DC native… as a journalist… as someone ending a long day… looking forward to @homicidewatch talk at #ONADC tonight.Patrick CooperThu, Jan 19 2012 18:25:23ReplyRetweet.@homicidewatch is amazing — find a need, bring passion. Stop just talking. Get stuff done. #onadcMichelle MinkoffThu, Jan 19 2012 20:30:54ReplyRetweetImpressive presentation at...
Center for Court Innovation: Use the criminal...
Greg Berman is the director a co-founder of the Center for Court Innovation, a New York City based policy research center that helps the justice system aid victims, reduce crime, strengthen neighborhoods, and improve public trust in justice. Berman has helped guide the organization from start-up to an annual budget of more than $17 million. He is the co-author of Trial & Error in Criminal Justice Reform: Learning from Failure (Urban Institute Press, 2010) and Good Courts: The Case for Problem-Solving Justice (The New Press, 2005).
Why should we be concerned about effective and efficient criminal justice and court systems? How do they improve lives and communities?
Greg Berman: The criminal justice system is one of our most important democratic institutions. An effective criminal justice system (and when we talk about the system, we’re really talking about many agencies–police, probation, courts, prosecutors, defenders, corrections, pre-trial services, etc) is important for two main reasons.
One, maintaining law and order and a sense of fairness is an essential building block for everything else society wants to do. Two, about every problem you’d ever want to address—race, poverty, homeless, addiction, mental illness—is enmeshed in the criminal justice system. This is one of the key underlying insights of The Center for Court Innovation: you can use the criminal justice process as a jumping off point for addressing a lot of social issues. This is also one of the main things that motivates me to do this work.
Figuring Out What a Reporter Has to Do
Two days ago I published a record of my efforts to get an interview with MPD Chief Cathy Lanier in order to explain to readers a significant hole in Homicide Watch DC’s 2011 Year in Review.
Yesterday, I published a response from the Chief’s office about how to deal with similar problems in the future. I made that conversation public as a service to other journalists who may, or may...
MPD Chief's Office: Use Us, Not PIO
Yesterday I wrote about why MPD Chief Cathy Lanier wasn’t included in Homicide Watch DC’s 2011 Year in Review. In short, my attempts to schedule an interview failed.
This afternoon Lt. Morgan Kane from the Chief’s Executive Office called. She said MPD took responsibility for the interview not being scheduled and apologized, saying that Lanier very much wanted to participate....
Beating the Slog: Inspiration from the Best...
It’s awards season for journalism and my goal is for Homicide Watch DC to be recognized this year. So there’s about a dozen cover letters and clip files on my plate right now.
I decided this morning to reach out to some of the people that I’ve gotten to know through Homicide Watch, either through their emails to me or comments that they’ve left on the site.
I asked them...
Why MPD Chief Cathy Lanier wasn't part of Homicide...
There was one notable absence in
Homicide Watch’s 2011 Year in Review and that was MPD Chief Cathy Lanier. While US Attorney Ronald Machen, Mayor Vincent Gray, Councilmembers Jim Graham and Jack Evans, and others participated, Lanier was illusive, despite my best efforts at communicating with her press office.
I owe an explanation to readers of why Chief Lanier wasn’t part of a...
Many thanks to US Attorney Ronald Machen for...
This letter was emailed to me shortly after Year in Review was published.
Looking Back at Year in Review: 10 Lessons for...
The query went out Nov. 2: What should Homicide Watch include in our look back on 2011?
Almost immediately the messages started rolling in. “Please write about my boyfriend,” wrote one woman. “His case hasn’t been closed.” “Write about transgender murder victims,” wrote someone else. “My neighbor was killed and I think that this is a...
“This investigation is social media phenomenon,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Mike...”
– L.A. arson: A turning point for police use of Twitter, social media - latimes.com
Intern With Homicide Watch DC
We’re taking applications for interns to cover courts for Homicide Watch DC.
Homicide Watch D.C. has openings for student interns interested in building clipfiles related to criminal justice. Students should be available one day a week from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. to work out of D.C. Superior Court alongside Homicide Watch Editor Laura Amico. Interns are responsible for covering the day’s court...
December 2011
2 posts
A Holiday Gift from MPD
Small things make this season bright. But between my mom visiting and trying to get a comprehensive Year in Review package put together, this December has been a little tight.
A special gift came from MPD this morning though, when a detective called seeking to get in touch with a victim’s daughter. After months of investigation, an arrest has been made in the case. The detective wanted to...
Gender and Entrepreneurship- Tips for Everyone
Is being an entrepreneur more difficult for women than for men? Chris and I work closely together on Homicide Watch and I try to pay attention to how we tackle things differently. There’s certainly some tasks he’s better suited to than I am, but is that our skills or our genders?
This list from Jean Brittingham came my way today. What hit home? “It’s not...
November 2011
7 posts
The Year in Comments
These were two children. Boys who had been getting away with little petty inappropriate behaviors for years. Our system sets our young men up for prison life by allowing them to get away with stuff until they are old enough to trap them. Derek is not a bad person and yet his life is over because of a decision made at 17. He is not a man. He is not an adult. When are we going to save our...
“Most founders of local online news operations I talk to are simultaneously...”
– What Can I Build Today? : CJR
“Everyone has to discover the process of public presentations for themselves and...”
– How not to screw up a speech or interview — Leonard Sipes.Com
#homicidetalks about engaging online
#homicidetalks is a Twitter hashtag I launched today as part of our year-in-review coverage. The first prompt: “If you could say one thing to someone convicted of a homicide, what would it be?”
It’s an engagement campaign that I put about two minutes of thought into before launching and I’m excited that I got a small handful of responses back in the moments after posting.
...
Can we crowdsource year-end coverage?
The past few weeks I’ve been trying to chip away at a pretty significant list of year-end stories. Among them are the typical “who died this year, where and why” that nearly every local news organization will run. But because we’re a hyper-focused beat, we try to do more.
Today I launched an experimental project trying to crowdsource memorial art. I created a public...
Trying to do the right thing: Navigating...
Sometimes it’s great being my own boss. No one to ask about taking an afternoon off or scheduling a doctor’s appointment. Other times, it’s a pain in the butt.
We run into all sorts of problems with Homicide Watch pretty regularly. Most of them are easy enough to sort out. Others are more difficult. Take last Friday for example: I had had charging documents up in a case all...
The Big Question I'm Using to Sculpt our Year-End...
Ah, November. It’s the month where we start to look back and say “so what happened this year?”
I’m sitting down today to map out how Homicide Watch is going to handle our year-end wrap up coverage.
It may seem early, but last year I waited until the end of December, which meant that the last week of the year was a nightmare. So today I’m listing out interesting...
October 2011
7 posts
“Women are advancing in entrepreneurship as well. An American Express OPEN State...”
– Why Women Make Excellent Entrepreneurs in the Digital Age
Today's Bright Spot: Speaking with On the Media's...
I was at NPR studios this afternoon to talk to Brooke Gladstone of On the Media about Homicide Watch and reporting from analytics.
On the Media is one of my favorite WNYC programs and it was a thrill to get to talk to Gladstone about Homicide Watch. Just doing that would have been enough, but Gladstone had a little gift for me: an excerpt of an interview that she did with Florida crime reporter...
Tips for nonprofit news site startups
The Knight Foundation has a new study out this morning examining the business models for seven locally-based nonprofit news sites in their drive to achieve sustainability. Focusing on high-profile ventures such as Texas Tribune and Voice of San Diego, the report, “Getting Local,” concludes that none of the sites are all the way to sustainability yet. But they are well along and developing best practices that other geographically-based ventures can learn from. The report identifies three “next-stage” opportunities, each with a flavor of paradox: While the sites were founded in part as a reaction to declines in newspaper and other traditional media coverage, they do better if they set editorial goals beyond simply replacing what is gone. Engaging a specific audience and demonstrating social utility will be key to attracting continued and broader support.
While all relied on foundation grants and/or a few big-ticket donors to get started, the best are diversifying income streams to include membership campaigns, events, sponsorships and advertising.
Being online-only slashes production and distribution expense and allows the sites to put a majority of their budget into editorial (unlike newspapers which typically devote only 10 to 15 percent to news). But there is a strong case for “balancing resource allocation” by adding technologists, development professionals and engagement specialists — rather than just hiring more reporters and editors.
Online Investigative journalism: more on reporting...
Five months ago I wrote about how I use Homicide Watch’s real-time analytics reports as a reporting tool.
Since then, analytics reports has become an even greater tool for us, made more important by recent changes in police communication.
Using analytics as a reporting tool is so dead simple that it sometimes amazes me.
Here’s what happened this weekend:
1. I woke up early Sunday...
Watch
Tip: "Great data projects begin with great...
At ONA I was asked if I ever saw Homicide Watch becoming an advocacy site. It was a good question because it means that people saw value in what— and how— we are reporting.
But my answer was and has always been “no.”
Part of what prompted the creation of Homicide Watch was the thought that when it came to discussions about violent crime, few in the city were able to speak...
Inspiration: Corey Haik, "Passionate and always in...
Forbes this week had an interview with Washington Post’s Cory Haik, who spoke about being a woman in journalism’s executive branch.
Her words, describing her own journey, describe my journey with Homicide Watch so well that they could have been my own. Isn’t it strange to see someone else putting words to your experiences?
Of course, Haik said it better than I ever have....
September 2011
1 post
This Newsroom, Now Silent: The Chilling Effects of...
At my first newspaper job I was mentored by a veteran photographer who was so attached to his portable scanner that he slept with it. All the better to catch the middle of the night fire, police chase, stabbing…
I, too, was soon enamored with the chatter from that box. I wrote a cheat sheet of police and fire codes, learned how to tune in to different channels and prided myself on being...
August 2011
16 posts
It was a dark and stormy night: our relaunch story
What were we thinking, launching a website just hours before the strongest parts of Hurricane Irene were due to sweep through D.C.?
These were my thoughts Sunday morning when I woke up, rolled over to grab my laptop, pulled up homicidewatch.org, and saw that internet service was out.
It was more than a little frightening. But shouldn’t there be at least a little fear in every big thing you...
RIP... Michael Jackson
With three homicides over the weekend, I was hitting the searches pretty heavily yesterday, looking for memorial comments, photos, etc.
Problem was, my “RIP” searched turned up almost nothing but memorial messages to Michael Jackson on his birthday.
Sometimes culture makes our best searches fail, but that’s ok.
Happy birthday MJ.
“Link to coverage elsewhere: It’s a strength, not a weakness
The old newsroom...”
– Link to coverage elsewhere: It’s a strength, not a weakness | Knight Digital Media Center
“Why we need open courts data – and newspapers need to improve too”
– Online Journalism Blog
So many of us working in journalism know that filling a request for information using FOIA is a last resort. Not only does it take knowing how to word the request exactly correctly (and working with/ finding someone who can help with this) but unless you’ve been...
A Tale of Two Homicides
Here’s a quick news check: Two homicides were reported in DC over the weekend. In the first, Viola Drath, a 91-year-old German born journalist, was killed in her Georgetown rowhouse. No arrests have been made, but with a documented history of domestic violence, local media is casting suspicion on the husband. In the second homicide, 28-year-old Vance Darnell Harris II was killed inside his...
When Moderating Works
As we near relaunch day for Homicide Watch (!) I’m thinking about how we want to word our comments policy on the new site. Our current policy has worked well and I think it only needs a few tweaks to make it as strong as possible. The goal is to foster conversation in a way that is respectful to how people feel and how they talk.
We moderate comments pretty heavily on Homicide Watch. We...
Can we advertise on a crime website?
With Homicide Watch, we’ve acknowledged from the very start that advertising could be difficult. Not only to sell, but to grow our audience.
What I’ve wanted to avoid is niche advertising (funeral homes, flowers, for example) and the impression that we’re in this for the money. Of course, this being a business, it needs to be self-supporting. This is not a volunteer effort. And...
Engage, Connect, Appeal
Current.org today has a report on the upcoming “Empowering Independent Media.” Says Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president of the Knight Foundation.
The content must engage people, the connectivity must engage them and when appropriate they need to be asked directly for money to help.
Poynter: How to Write Good Headlines
Thanks, Matt Thompson, for these pointers on Poynter this week.
Print and clip: Quicklist of 10 questions to ask while writing a headline:
Is the headline accurate?
Does it work out of context?
How compelling a promise does it make?
How easy is it to parse?
Could it benefit from a number?
Are all the words necessary?
Does it obey the Proper Noun Rule?
Would it work better as an...
On our way to something great!
I was proud to be selected this year as one of three inaugural MJ Bear fellows by the Online News Association.
My colleagues in the fellowship, Lucas Timmons and Lam Thuy Vu, do great work and I’m looking forward to getting to know them.
You can read ONA’s announcement of the fellowship here. And I want to give a big shout-out to our local DCist for reporting the fellowship. Said...
On Brand and Reputation
From ACMaurer’s blog:
Your brand is what you claim yourself to be. Your reputation is what others claim you to be.
Well, Now I Want an iPad
I see more and more attorneys with iPads every day at D.C.’s Superior Court. They hold them behind their yellow legal pads when making arguments before judges, and cast fleeting glances at the screens while waiting in the gallery for their cases to be called.
As I lug my (once seemingly light and perfect) MacBook around the courthouse and head down to the cafeteria to crack it open and...
Turning Journalism into Community Activism
There’s a good post up on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation blog about how a newspaper partnered with community leaders to tackle an obesity problem.
What started as a simple series on obesity in the local newspaper turned into a community-wide movement.
George Roberts, Chief Executive Officer of the Northeast Texas Public Health District and Dave Berry, Editor of the Tyler Morning...
Weighing Privacy Inequality in Online Shoeleather...
In an excellent blog post this week, Joanna Geary wrote about how easy it is to find people online. Not only find people online, but find everything from home address to phone numbers to family photos all from a simple tweet.
I’ve gone from one tweet to knowing an entire family’s names, location, address, contact details, what they look like, how they are connected to the military and,...