‘Chicago has seen 146 murders so far this year. What would it mean to cover them responsibly?’
27th May 2015
One of DNAinfo’s first projects was also one of its most ambitious: a timeline of every murder within city limits. When the hyperlocal website launched its Chicago branch in late 2012, they hoped to raise the standards of local crime reporting. “The idea is to do old-school reporting in a new medium,” the Reader reported. “Knocking on doors. Shoe leather.”
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DNAinfo’s murder timeline raised the bar for crime reporting in Chicago, but also raises some fundamental questions: Why should we tell isolated stories about violent crime? Do reports of shootings serve impoverished neighborhoods or illuminate institutional violence? What, to put it simply, is crime reporting for?