Bringing Context and Community to Crime Reporting

Too often, crime report­ing focus­es on a sin­gle inci­dent, not the root caus­es of crime or poten­tial ways to reduce it. This approach pro­vides lit­tle pub­lic safe­ty infor­ma­tion to audi­ences and often per­pet­u­ates false stereo­types, which can harm the chil­dren and fam­i­lies liv­ing in the affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties. More­over, news­rooms that are look­ing to pro­vide more mean­ing­ful crime cov­er­age often lack the resources need­ed to improve or the nec­es­sary guid­ance to adjust their reporting.

To address this issue, the Poyn­ter Insti­tute intro­duced Trans­form­ing Local Crime Report­ing Into Pub­lic Safe­ty Jour­nal­ism in 2022 to help news­rooms as they refo­cus their usu­al crime report­ing into pub­lic safe­ty jour­nal­ism more like­ly to pro­duce com­mu­ni­ty-based dis­cus­sions and solu­tions. Dur­ing these vir­tu­al sem­i­nars, sup­port­ed by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion, news­rooms — tele­vi­sion, dig­i­tal, print, non­prof­it and radio — have learned how to focus on com­mu­ni­ty change and pub­lic safe­ty efforts when report­ing on crime.

“Trans­for­ma­tive change takes time,” said Wendy Wal­lace, the direc­tor of Foun­da­tion Rela­tions at Poyn­ter. ​“And it takes a crit­i­cal mass of news­rooms to imple­ment these changes before last­ing, sys­temwide change takes place.”

Poynter’s Impact

Since the pro­gram began, Poyn­ter has helped more than 80 news­rooms and more than 500 jour­nal­ists across the Unit­ed States more deeply and effec­tive­ly report on crime. This year’s sem­i­nar includ­ed 19 news­rooms from sev­er­al cities, including:

• Mem­phis, Tennessee; 
• Char­lotte, North Carolina; 
• Colum­bus, Ohio; and 
• Detroit, Michi­gan.

Through­out the 24-week pro­gram, reporters and edi­tors worked with experts in the field to review recent case stud­ies that demon­strate how to imple­ment crime report­ing that ben­e­fits com­mu­ni­ties. Par­tic­i­pants were tasked with record­ing their over­all vision for news cov­er­age, road­blocks to achiev­ing their mis­sions and how they would imple­ment new poli­cies. Reporters and edi­tors were then teamed with oth­er news­rooms fac­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges as well as a coach to exchange ideas on how to reach their respec­tive goals.

“The over­all expe­ri­ence real­ly felt sol­id and com­pre­hen­sive,” said Kyn­dell Hark­ness, head of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty at The Min­neso­ta Star Tri­bune and a for­mer par­tic­i­pant of the pro­gram. ​“They gave us step-by-step work to build a struc­ture that allowed for the orga­ni­za­tion to shift its pub­lic safe­ty cov­er­age. The pro­gram also gave us the ​‘why.’ It’s impor­tant when you are mak­ing a cul­tur­al shift that you have the lan­guage to say why this needs to happen.”

From Lessons to Action

Since com­plet­ing the course, all par­tic­i­pants have adjust­ed their crime report­ing. ​“They are doing much less incre­men­tal cov­er­age and are instead focus­ing on data trends, account­abil­i­ty and solu­tions jour­nal­ism,” said Kel­ly McBride, senior vice pres­i­dent and chair of the Craig New­mark Cen­ter for Ethics and Lead­er­ship at Poynter.

Notable par­tic­i­pants included:

• The Asso­ci­at­ed Press (AP) cre­at­ed a chap­ter on crime report­ing in the AP Style­book, which was influ­enced by its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sem­i­nar. New entries rec­om­mend sub­sti­tut­ing the use of the terms ​“juve­nile” and ​“minor” — which can have dehu­man­iz­ing con­no­ta­tions — with ​“child” or ​“teenag­er.” ​“This (chap­ter) will influ­ence hun­dreds of news­rooms and thou­sands of jour­nal­ists. And we are proud to have been a part of it,” said McBride.
• The Lex­ing­ton Her­ald Leader (Lex­ing­ton, Ken­tucky) now requires its reporters to ver­i­fy whether a sto­ry will enhance the community’s knowl­edge on pub­lic safe­ty and com­mu­ni­ty issues before report­ing on it. 
• Jack­son Hole News & Guide (Jack­son, Wyoming) launched the ​“Clean Slate Ini­tia­tive,” which high­lights changes made to its coverage.
• KSL-TV (Salt Lake City, Utah) is cre­at­ing a hub with data and experts that reporters can con­tact so that they can more eas­i­ly add con­text to their stories.

In a recent Poyn­ter blog post, Jere­my Chisen­hall, a for­mer break­ing news edi­tor at the Her­ald Leader and par­tic­i­pant in the work­shop, said, ​“News­rooms all over the coun­try face finan­cial chal­lenges and read­er­ship chal­lenges these days, but I think that a pro­gram like this can real­ly help you.” He con­tin­ued, ​“Get­ting this for­mal train­ing and learn­ing how to do those types of sto­ries has been real­ly help­ful for us and I imag­ine it would be real­ly help­ful for many news­rooms across the country.”

McBride and her team have begun recruit­ing news­rooms for the fourth install­ment of the sem­i­nar, set to begin in March 2025.

Learn how the Bal­ti­more News Col­lab­o­ra­tive ampli­fies cov­er­age of youth-focused stories