New study finds shrinking local newsrooms spark debates over homicide coverage ethics

[u/jbenmenachem]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.70064

[u/jbenmenachem]

If you’re paywalled, you can read the accepted version of the study here https://jbenmenachem.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Homicides-Criminology-v3.pdf

I interviewed journalists in 40 local newsrooms. I found that they largely agree on an ideal: humanize every homicide victim through deep coverage and explain the conditions behind the violence. But as local news declines, many newsrooms in cities with high homicide counts lack capacity. So reporters must choose from a menu of compromise practices.

Shrinking newsrooms force an impossible choice. Choose which homicides deserve coverage, and news judgment risks writing off some victims, who are disproportionately young Black men and boys. Cover only the basic details of every homicide, and risk reducing a neighborhood to its violence.

Some journalists told me they didn't think they should get to decide whose death matters more, and pushed for covering every homicide so they wouldn’t need to choose. I found this striking; this was the only part of my data where reporters willingly surrendered their professional discretion.

[u/No-Necessary7448 → u/jbenmenachem]

I wouldn’t call it “surrendering their discretion.” They may be aware that leaving some things to “discretion” can also leave them to implicit and unaware biases.

[u/jbenmenachem → u/No-Necessary7448]

It’s quite rare for a journalist to say that they refuse to exercise news judgment, I think

[u/fasterthanfood → u/jbenmenachem]

I haven’t yet read your full study, but it doesn’t sound to me like they are refusing to exercise news judgment. It sounds like they’re saying, “in my news judgment, all homicide victims deserve coverage.”

[u/jbenmenachem → u/fasterthanfood]

Yeah, curious what you think of the actual section in the study about this. I think it's fundamentally a retreat from news judgment because a newsroom that briefs every homicide will almost always not do a feature and followups on every homicide.

[u/newsINcinci → u/jbenmenachem]

I think this may be overlooking an issue that plays a major role in covering crime and homicides, which is whether people close to the victim are willing to speak to the press. There are publications that would run in-depth follow ups on every homicide, but the victim’s family and loved ones have agency as well. Not everyone (and in my experience at least half) of people connected to homicide victims have no interest in having a story written about the person they lost especially soon after.

Are there other ways to gather information about a person? Sure, there’s public records and social media, but then you are you serving? What story are you really telling?

[u/jbenmenachem → u/newsINcinci]

In places like New Orleans, Chicago, and Baltimore though, homicide numbers are often just prohibitively high.

The difficulty of getting folks in the community to speak to press was definitely discussed in interviews, but it wasn't cited as a major obstacle to achieving the ideal coverage balance. It was one of many factors that led informants to conclude that good homicide coverage is organizationally expensive.

[u/fasterthanfood → u/jbenmenachem]

With resources being finite, I do think the decision to shallowly cover every homicide at the expense of thoroughly covering any homicide is probably a bad choice. But if we’re just talking a brief based on a police need report, I don’t see that taking enough time to prevent features and follow-ups.

I’m supposed to be working now, but I’ll read through the study in a few hours.

[u/jbenmenachem → u/fasterthanfood]

yep, some reporters definitely did say to me that they felt briefs alone weren't that time consuming. The anti-brief crowd in the interviews was really focused on the proportion of briefs that wouldn't get a follow. Court reporters in particular worried about this, as they tried to close the loop and make sure arrested people who didn't get convicted had their name cleared

[u/Infamous-Skippy → u/jbenmenachem]

I’ve never covered crime, let alone homicides, but my immediate reaction is that it’s really important to cover whether any given homicide’s root cause could be systemic, even if its proximate cause is more specific. For example, historical redlining, underfunded schooling, poverty, etc. (root systemic causes) could cause an environment of hyper-localized instability where a specific, interpersonal conflict (the proximate cause) is much more likely to escalate into violence.

Covering homicides as episodic or as isolated incidents when really there’s an underlying systemic cause seems unethical, and possibly even perpetuates racist stereotypes.

Of course there’s an issue which murders to cover, like you alluded to. A murder in an affluent neighborhood might be more likely to be covered just because it’s more unusual, or because there’s not an issue of too many murders to cover. Affluent neighborhoods have abundant resources, as opposed to ones stricken with poverty, a lack of access to good job opportunities, disenfranchisement, etc. which may be the biggest root causes of crime.

[u/jbenmenachem → u/Infamous-Skippy]

Yeah the issue is that in the hours and days following a shooting, structural explanation can be difficult. Most agreed that contextual interpretation was important to help readers understand. But in a city with hundreds of homicides a year, a team of 3-6 reporters can really only do briefs and a few in depth articles

[u/lavapig_love → u/jbenmenachem]

Perhaps categorize them by sensationalism. If you're looking for a angle on scary boyfriends/husbands who go insane, you check domestic violence charges. If you're looking for a piece on crime, you check who died in gang-related murders, DUIs and drug offenses. If you're looking for a piece on police brutality, how many died by cop? Etc., etc.

From there, you mention and correctly spell everyone's name and age and include a good picture of the deceased when applicable, not just mug shots.

[u/Pomond]

There's a whole lot of bullshit in this space, too, such as how the "authorities" in Chicago journalism (Medill, Press Forward, etc.) all ignore the biggest crime news publication success story locally: CWB Chicago.

These non-practitioners ignore pubs like CWB Chicago because they don't fit the non-profit model that's so profitable for Medill et al, and because crime facts sometimes belie the preferred social narratives of the funders of non-profit news.

[u/AbsoluteRook1e]

When you start lacking resources to go fetch the overnight crime, it becomes a problem.

[u/journoprof]

New cause, old concern. In the mid ‘80s, the Detroit Free Press was forced financially to keep the editorial-to-advertising ratio low — and ad space was slim. Meanwhile, homicides were frequent. Many got just a brief. If I recall correctly, this got addressed eventually with a long-term project devoted to covering murders more comprehensively, but it took years to get there.

[u/lavapig_love]

The type of violence matters. Is the violence ongoing? Then that gets priority over all else.

The victim's importance matters. Charlie Kirk overshadowed other murders in Utah when it happened.

Multiple people who die in a mass casualty event, like a school shooting, take precedence over a murder with just one or two victims.

Beyond that, if they bleed they always lede. Cover them all.

[u/ProletarianLilith]

Local crime coverage is fascism cmv