| Chapter
1
The
Crime Beat
By
Dave Krajicek
Introduction
If journalism is about telling stories, then the crime beat should
be the best in the business because it offers such great stories
to tell. The dramatis personae for even routine crime tales
likely will include a protagonist and antagonist, if not outright
heroes and scoundrels.
As Edna Buchanan, the legendary Miami Herald crime reporter,
put it, the crime beat "has it all: greed, sex, violence, comedy
and tragedy."
The crime beat is a place where a journalist can "make his
bones," as the mob adage goes. (My gender reference is convenient
but dated. Buchanan noted that a female cop reporter was rare when
she started in 1971. The gender split on the beat today seems roughly
even.)
Buchanan and other top crime reporters share a number of traits,
including exceptional initiative and determination, an eye for accuracy
and detail, a knack for sourcing, and the ability to tell a story.
Many editors and producers still use the crime beat as a sink-or-swim
test. Those who display fortitude and resilience under the beat's
special pressures are deemed capable of "promotion" to
other beats. Those who don't pass the Johnny Deadline test are destined
for features.
Unfortunately, too many news operations use sink-or-swim as an
excuse for failing to provide training and support when an inexperienced
reporter is assigned to crime.
Consider the experience of Ilene Prusher, hired in the mid-1990s
to cover crime in the suburbs for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"I had no training whatsoever," said Prusher, now a
foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.
"They just told me that I was the police reporter. The former
police reporter was gone, so no one could introduce me to the key
sources or give advice. My boss gave me a list of phone numbers
for the police departments and told me to call them."
Although there is a solid cadre of career crime reporters across
the country, the beat suffers from high turnover. And while good
crime reporters are highly valued in a newsroom, the cop beat still
has a stigma.
When I started in the business, in the late 1970s, a seasoned
colleague suggested I spend no more than 18 months on the crime
beat lest I be tarred as a cop-shop lifer. Peter Hermann, a veteran
police reporter at the Baltimore Sun, recalled that a colleague
once told him he was too good a journalist to waste his talents
on crime reporting. (Not long after he made the comment, Hermann
was transferred directly from the police beat to Middle East correspondent
for the Sun.)
Most reporters have no criminal justice background when assigned
to cover crime. Whether a reporter plans a year or a lifetime on
the beat, news organizations should help the journalist get off
on the right foot by allowing adequate time and resources for training.
This chapter of the CJJ Guide to Reporting offers information
and tips about crime beat training, source relationship, records
and access, story ideas, enterprise and preparedness, as well as
sidebars about such things as the history of police reporting and
important subjects like the Miranda warning, "perp walks,"
crime waves and the FBI's National Crime Information Center.
About the Beat
"News is the inexact measure of the ebb and flow
of the tides of human aspiration, the ignominy of mankind, the glory
of the human race. It is the best record we have of the incredible
meanness and the magnificent courage of man."
Stanley Walker, a respected editor of the New York Herald Tribune,
may have had the crime beat in mind when he wrote that elegant definition
long ago.
Like few other news beats, crime requires a reporter to juggle
many forms of news. At most newspapers and radio and TV stations,
the crime reporter will cover an array of stories – from traffic
tie-ups and fires to homicides and airplane crashes. The beat is
synonymous with breaking news.
Most crime reporters also are expected to produce longer-range
pieces – weekend features, analyses, investigations. They
do all this while covering the cop shop, from the blotter to internal
affairs, the budget to union politics.
Crime reporters often are the busiest journalists in any newsroom.
Newspapers in all but the largest cities dedicate a column or
more per day to a small-type accounting of transgressions and misfortunes
– arrests for driving drunk or passing bad checks, reports
to police of break-ins and thefts, convictions for larcenies and
welfare fraud. The task of daily compilation often falls to the
police reporter.
This is one reason that small-town police reporters can feel even
more pressure than those working in big cities do.
Small-town reporters face other special challenges, as well.
A crime reporter at a small news operation might deal with the
same two or three sources every day. A conflict with a single source
can change a relationship with the entire agency. A single story
about a rogue cop might leave the reporter blackballed – even
if the story is perfectly accurate.
In a sense, big-city reporters enjoy the cocoon of competition.
When "bad news" breaks about a police agency, a dozen
journalists might cover the story. The risk for long-term damage
to a reporter-source relationship is mitigated because so many are
covering the same story.
As a police reporter in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and New York City,
I found that cops are cops and crime is crime. New York had more
of both, but my experiences in Iowa covering fire and police stories
translated to the big city.
Two differences: Crime reporting in New York was more competitive,
and journalists there were more aggressive.
Police-reporter relations were similar in both places –
and in every other city with which I am familiar. Cops are leery
of journalists, and many journalists are cynical about cops. Perhaps
this is healthy.
Peter Hermann, the former Baltimore Sun cop reporter, once
made the salient suggestion that crime reporters and police officers
need not begin the day with a group hug. Each should simply resolve
to give the other a fair shake. Reporters should seek respectful
cooperation, not admiration, from the police. And if the police
do their job well, we should respect them in return.
As with most beats, the best reporters are those who manage to
develop the best sources. Some states have journalist-friendly record
laws that mitigate the need for human sourcing for certain types
of information. Nonetheless, successful crime reporters, like Edna
Buchanan, stay on the beat long enough and have adequate interpersonal
skills to develop sources.
Today's crime reporters have the advantage of vast electronic
resources, including improved access to expert sourcing and direct
access to information.
On the other hand, local sourcing can be challenging in this era
of the public information officer. In many agencies, rank-and-file
officers and even supervisors are cautioned (or ordered) against
speaking with reporters, often under threat of career-impeding sanctions.
(More on PIOs below.)
Yet crime reporters across the country continue to earn scoops
through sourcing. How do they do it? Through enterprise, creativity,
competence and longevity.
Continue to the next
page in "Chapter 1: The Crime Beat" >>>
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