The United States got safer between 1993 and 2019, but you wouldn’t know that by asking the average American.
Unfortunately, journalism is partly to blame.
Despite federal statistics that demonstrated crime fell 34% from 1991 to 2000, research shows that news stories about crime focused on homicide rose by over 700%. Research has also shown that journalism consistently overrepresents communities of color in crime coverage.
Even as crime continued to fall in the 2010s, newsrooms produced a high volume of stories about crime. Many of the stories that have traditionally made up the bulk of criminal justice coverage are one-off crime stories that only include law enforcement perspectives, provide little context as to crime trends, and don’t follow up in communities to understand root causes and solutions of criminal incidents.
There are many reasons that newsrooms have continued these practices and struggled to change. As Poynter’s Kelly McBride wrote in 2023, “Going beyond mostly cosmetic reforms is much harder for news companies because it requires the entire staff to rethink how it defines breaking news. … Most crime stories are the junk food of the daily news budget. Nobody wants to run them, but breaking the habit is incredibly difficult.”
One-off crime stories often are cheap and easy to cover, allowing newsrooms to churn out content more quickly. Certain salacious stories may bring in more traffic. Crime is often a topic that is touched by multiple teams in the newsroom who may not be working in concert with one another. Additionally, many journalists are used to reporting on the topic using this approach and don’t see the need to change it.
Over the past several years, newsrooms have tried to make changes to their crime coverage but have found it difficult to do alone.
That’s where Poynter can help.
APPLY NOW! Transforming Local Crime Reporting Into Public Safety Journalism (2024)
Newsrooms from across the country have embarked on a journey to reshape crime coverage by transforming their reporting approach. Instead of focusing on crime incidents, they are learning to truly prioritize public safety and community impact.
Along with McBride, I’m the lead of Poynter’s ongoing Transforming Local Crime Reporting Into Public Safety Journalism program. In our sessions, selected newsrooms get small bites of instruction on change management that guides them step by step as they transform their coverage. Participating newsrooms leave the program with a custom policy on how their newsrooms will cover public safety moving forward. This policy includes a mission statement for public safety coverage; guidelines of what stories the newsroom covers; and plans for training, implementation and evaluation.
Sixty-five newsrooms have participated in the program so far, attending 12 two-hour virtual training sessions every other week. On off weeks, newsrooms received up to two hours of personalized coaching. Many of the news organizations that have already been through the program report positive outcomes, including improved reporting quality, increased accountability and higher subscription conversion rates.
(We are now recruiting for the next cohort of newsrooms.)
One newsroom that embraced this transformation process is the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald Leader. Breaking news editor Jeremy Chisenhall and Herald Leader staffers recognized the need to reevaluate their crime coverage and explore ways to better serve their community.
“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,” Chisenhall said. “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 outlined the program’s training in “Local newsrooms want to stop sensationalizing crime, but it’s hard.” Steps include articulating a journalistic purpose that goes beyond, “It’s just interesting”; establishing guidelines about which crimes should be pursued or reported; getting data, understanding trends and accurately informing the public; and coming up with a custom plan for changes that are rooted in community service, resources and newsroom mission.
The Transforming Crime program helped the Herald Leader newsroom realize that the previous approach, which often included one-off crime stories, did not provide depth and impact for their readers.
“In terms of crime reporting, I think we were less worried about impact and more worried about audience (metrics) and just getting things out there quickly,” Chisenhall said, noting that this is a common framing throughout the news industry.
By participating in a program aimed at reshaping crime coverage, Chisenhall and his team gained a deeper understanding of the gravity of their reporting. They shifted their focus toward trend stories and police accountability, aiming to improve public understanding of safety and community issues. With the help of Transforming Crime‘s teaching, the news team crafted a policy around crime coverage, which now requires journalists to examine whether a story helps the public’s understanding of safety or community issues before reporting on it.
One of the impacts of this coverage change has been a drop in general busyness for news staffers, who no longer report on one-off crime stories like they used to. It also has led to a drop in pageviews. But that’s not a big deal because the Herald Leader has observed higher subscription conversion rates on their public safety coverage, which has led them to believe that the more impactful reporting has resonated with their audience.
When thinking about advice he would give other newsrooms, Chisenhall said, “Have patience and be OK with that (losing pageviews) in the short term because as you reshape your coverage and start figuring out what you are doing with that time that you’re no longer spending on those shorter stories, your going to see the depth of your reporting improve greatly.”
Other newsrooms, such as Utah’s KSL, have also experienced several benefits since reforming their approach to crime coverage. The KSL team who attended the program came from the news organization’s television, radio and print components. This aspect made coordination between the divisions critical. In spite of this potential challenge, the team was able to get its policy approved across their newsrooms.
Annie Knox, an investigative reporter from KSL TV, said that although the team hasn’t trained all of its journalists yet, the respective newsrooms have already improved their transparency with the community. They are being more open with their audiences about what information law enforcement told them, what they were able to corroborate and what questions they still need to get answers on. Knox also started reporting on sexual assaults and the challenges of reporting them for the unhoused, a community that is often marginalized both by media and law enforcement.
“I used to see police coverage as (either) the more routine stories that we cover more often (or) the big accountability takedown pieces that take a long time to put together. I never saw a middle ground between the two, and this training has helped me understand that accountability work doesn’t have to be just for those bigger stories,” Knox said.
This training has compelled her to ask more accountability-focused questions in her day-to-day coverage and seek more data and context to inform her reporting. The KSL news group is working to build out a resource hub of data and experts so that other reporters can add context to their stories easily and efficiently.
Kyndell Harkness, the head of culture and community at Minnesota’s Star Tribune, was a participant in the 2022 cohort and a coach in 2023’s program. Harkness said she was drawn to the course because newsrooms are fighting for relevance and have to evolve. She said that the program helped her newsroom figure out what change management looks like for crime reporting, and allowed staffers to reflect more on why they covered crime in a particular way.
“In a lot of newsrooms, we don’t have an opportunity to stop and think about what we’re actually doing,” Harkness said. “We just continue on that hamster wheel of news and are not able to get off long enough to really make that connection between our actions and the results that happen in the communities that we’re serving.”
She noted that the program allowed her team the space to be more reflective, and that the experience highlighted the importance of building a newsroomwide policy and process that leads to reporting from a public safety lens, instead of depending on individual journalists to carry the weight alone. Her newsroom is currently implementing its story takedown policy and is continuing to evaluate whether its coverage is meeting the standards laid out in its policy.
“I think we hold too tight to things in our industry out of fear,” Harkness said. “We hold on to the past because we’re afraid of what the future might hold for us. But when we know that our systems are broken, what we show actually matters. We have to understand that we are reporting on systems and we cannot be the mouthpiece for systems. And we’ve been the mouthpiece for systems for far too long.”
Transforming Local Crime Reporting Into Public Safety Journalism (2024) is accepting applications until Jan. 30
