In Chapter 1 of Covering Crime and Justice, I have learned some new ideas about crime reporting and writing. The explanation about covering the news while still focusing on moral and ethical aspects of journalism was really informational. One excerpt that I found even more intriguing than anything else is the idea of crime reporting being important over being interesting. As a journalist, you want to try to be both, but the news itself is interesting and important enough, so journalists do not need to add spice to the story.
When we are doing a crime story, I am going to ask the three questions necessary to making a good crime article. They are:
A) Is the crime part of a trend or an aberration? (In either case, tell your readers or viewers.)
B) Why should people care about the story?
C) Does it leave readers or viewers with a false impression about crime or raise a safety issue that can be answered?
These questions are really important toward the main focus of giving the news while still being interesting to the readers, and maintaining a moral represenation. Crime reporting is really difficult because opinions don't mean anything. Very few care about what a friend has to say about this person. The focus is on the news, what happened, how, why (if possible), who was involved; all of this has to be done, while still following the morals of journalism and still being interesting. That is why Crime Reporting is so difficult.
One of the standard parts of crime reporting is the victim profile, but that's a separate project from the hard news story on the crime itself. We're focusing on the breaking-news component for now.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at October 18, 2005 08:12 AMI thought it was interesting how Krajicek placed so much emphasis on using crime stories to make the public aware of larger trends or issues. It seems like crime reporting is one of the riskiest, yet most powerful types of reporting that journalists do.
Posted by: ChrisU at October 19, 2005 10:36 AMI can absolutely agree that crime reporting is the most difficult and risky type of journalism. There is so many people to consider, the victim, the victim's family, the accused, the accused family, the people that have valuable information; all of these people need to be considered. Not to mention, making sure all of the facts are right, because that is really most imporant.
Posted by: Jason Pugh at November 10, 2005 07:50 PM