Browsing: Case Studies and Year-End Reports

Breaking-news journalism, linked inextricably to criminal justice beats, is changing—driven by unrelenting micro-deadlines and financial pressures that have whittled staffs and forced editors and producers to rethink their newsroom structures and news-gathering processes.

We’re only two months into 2011, and there’s no shortage of crime news —-from the shooting of a congresswoman in Tucson that shocked the nation to a supposedly “polite” armed robber in Seattle who also got wide notice. Yet few stories on individual crimes, large and small, enlighten Americans much on how to reduce crime generally or to protect themselves specifically.

investigative reporters Doug Pardue and Glenn Smith of The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina looked at why their state seemed to have so many cases of violent crimes being committed by people who had been paroled or placed on probation.