Newsrooms often give one of the most emotionally demanding and delicate jobs in journalism – the crime beat – to our least experienced and supported young reporters.
In the wake of the mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school, reporters from all over the nation swarmed the small town peppering residents, victims’ families and authorities with questions.
In addition to the stories of heartbreak and systemic incompetence that ended up on the page, another narrative developed on journalism twitter: how covering crime — and not just mass death, even chasing scanner traffic — can be traumatic, and because of the way we structure our newsrooms, that trauma falls disproportionately on our least experienced, least supported reporters.
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At a lot of media companies, the crime beat is new reporter purgatory. This is probably your first job out of college: listen to scanner traffic and when something newsworthy happens, you run out and report it.
In one sense, it’s journalism on easy mode — the stories literally come to you — and in that sense, it’s understandable to put a young reporter on it. But that inexperience creates a real imbalance between the journalist and power, asking the least experienced writers to hold their own against career law enforcement bureaucrats and professional communicators. And because there’s so much to cover, new reporters often only have time to get the police account of things, and rarely get a chance to actually follow up to see if the person arrested actually ends up facing trial.
You’re going to hear from two different young reporters, Rebecca White from KPBX and Valerie Osier, on the effects of this, and why, for the health of our communities and the mental health of young reporters, the crime beat has to go.
