As March draws to a close I’d like to mark an important anniversary: Homicide Watch D.C. has been reporting and publishing crime news for six months.
My husband, Chris, and I started working on the site in September 2009 with a lot of brainstorming, planning and research. We finally launched on WordPress at the very end of September 2010. While we had no idea at that point where the project would take us or how many hours (nights, weekends, early mornings) would go into the daily operations, being able to do this work every day has been more rewarding than we ever could have imagined.
What I like best is bringing you news that no one else has. By staying with cases from start to finish, we have made huge headway already in reporting and publishing important information about every homicide in our District. As good reporters know, the best way to get a story is to stay ahead of it; I do that every day attending court hearings and connecting with families, friends, co-workers and neighbors of homicide victims and suspects.
I am always interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas about the work we are doing. But let me take this anniversary to remind you of my email address: HomicideWatchDC [at] gmail.com.
You probably know by now that I’m big on our primary source documents; if there’s an arrest warrant, a criminal complaint, a motion, a press release, a flier, you should have as much access to that piece of (digital) paper that I have. And I’ve learned how much interest you have in the photo gallery we’ve gathered of victim’s photos. I try to keep it up-to-date as much as I can.
If you have any ideas for other features for the site, please send them my way. Or just write in to let me know what’s working and not working for you.
Most of all, I want to say, thanks for helping to make our first six months such a success! The support and encouragement of so many in this community has kept us going!
- Laura
