Why don't crim justice reporters talk to people in the crim justice system?
If your beat is prisons talk to more people who are in them.
Business reporters talk to business people. Fashion reporters talk to people in the fashion industry. Politics reporters talk to the ghouls who run our country, etc.
So why do mainstream criminal justice reporters only barely speak to people most directly affected by the criminal justice system?
Inmates in Alabama are staging a strike to protest Alabama’s insanely draconian habitual offender law; the parole board’s glacially slow pardons process; and awful conditions, from violence and overcrowding to the lack of educational resources necessary for re-integration after release. Major outlets including the AP, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, have covered the strike.
All three publications present a nominal quote or two from participants behind bars. Would you trust a campaign reporter with almost no access to the candidates?
The internet has made contacting people behind bars remarkably easy. Don’t tell my editor, but it took me like half a day to do the reporting for a freelance assignment on the strike. All I did was DM reporter Keri Blakinger asking her to hook me up with a striker in an Alabama prison. Within seconds he texted me from a burner phone, and proceeded to connect me with more people. Then I undertook the incredibly difficult reporting challenge of joining a Facebook group comprised of family and friends of inmates, and had three more interviews in like 8 minutes.
In a few cases I didn’t even have to take on the dreaded millennial challenge of speaking to a person on the phone. I got great quotes over DM.
This Herculean effort will yield a much richer story than major publications with all of the resources in the world. Their stories are basically interchangeable. A mid libs of “official statement” “another official statement” one quote that’s like, “Officials say, but … “
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