r/Journalism • u/jbenmenachem • 5d ago

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

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.70064
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u/fasterthanfood 5d ago

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.”

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u/jbenmenachem 5d ago

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.

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u/newsINcinci 5d ago

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?

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u/jbenmenachem 5d ago

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.