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Funded! This project successfully raised its funding goal on September 13, 2012.

How and why Homicide Watch is different from most crime coverage

Update #3 · Aug 18, 2012 · comment

Homicide Watch covers every murder, from crime to conviction, and organizes information around victims and suspects. 

We follow an "open notebook" policy, meaning almost everything we use in our reporting process ends up on the site: legal documents, a calendar of upcoming court dates, raw press releases and wanted posters are all available for readers.

We make an extra effort to bring in the voices of those affected by violent crime. Families of victims and suspects can write guest posts and share their experiences directly, and we highlight the best comments we receive.

For more on how Homicide Watch operates, listen to this interview with On the Media or watch the video below from the Sunlight Foundation.

Special thanks to the Sunlight Foundation for letting us reuse some of their b-roll in our own video.

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  • Pledge $10 or more

    297 backers

    Support better crime coverage in Washington, DC. We'll list your name in a special thank you post on Homicide Watch DC.

    Estimated delivery: Oct 2012
  • Pledge $20 or more

    229 backers

    Get a copy of our 2011 Year in Review packaged as an ebook. This includes 23 stories about crime in Washington, DC, plus guest columns from DC's mayor and city council members.

    Estimated delivery: Sep 2012
  • Pledge $50 or more

    202 backers

    You’ll receive the 2012 Year in Review packaged as an ebook. This package will provide a look back at a year of crime in DC, including long-form narratives, investigative features and data visualizations. It will arrive in January 2013. We'll also list your name in a special thank you post.

    Estimated delivery: Jan 2013
  • Pledge $125 or more

    27 backers

    Your sponsorship message, with an image and link, runs in the Homicide Watch DC sidebar for one month. It is seen by thousands of DC residents, who will know that you’re helping to support a unique and cherished resource. Our users spend an average of six minutes on the site and viewed 330,000 pages last month.

    Estimated delivery: Oct 2013
  • Pledge $175 or more

    7 backers

    Get our data! At your request, we'll send you a spreadsheet containing up to one year of DC homicide data. This includes details about every victim and every suspect in our custom-built database. We record victims' and suspects' name, age, race, and gender. For victims, we also gather the homicide location, method (shooting, stabbing, etc) and place of death (at the scene or hospital). For suspects, we include arrest date and case status. This is data we use ourselves to produce stories like this: http://bit.ly/OSaSY0

    Estimated delivery: Oct 2012
  • Pledge $250 or more

    11 backers Limited (39 of 50 left)

    Invitation to a special happy hour with Homicide Watch team at ONA12 in San Francisco. Hang out with journalists trying to reinvent criminal justice reporting.

    Estimated delivery: Sep 2012
  • Pledge $350 or more

    0 backers

    Get our data! At your request, we'll send you a spreadsheet containing up to two years of DC homicide data. This includes details about every victim and every suspect in our custom-built database. We record victims' and suspects' name, age, race, and gender. For victims, we also gather the homicide location, method (shooting, stabbing, etc) and place of death (at the scene or hospital). For suspects, we include arrest date and case status. This is data we use ourselves to produce stories like this: http://bit.ly/OSaSY0

    Estimated delivery: Oct 2012
  • Pledge $500 or more

    4 backers Limited (6 of 10 left)

    Lunch with Homicide Watch founding editor and 2013 Nieman-Berkman fellow Laura Amico at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.

    Estimated delivery: Nov 2012
  • Pledge $1,000 or more

    1 backer Limited (29 of 30 left)

    Year in Review Sponsor. You get a preview of our 2012 Year in Review, plus a skype chat with the reporters putting it together, plus a sponsorship message, link and image on the splash page. This sponsorship won’t expire. You’ll also receive the entire collection of Year in Review stories packaged as a ebook.

    Estimated delivery: Dec 2012
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    1 backer Limited (4 of 5 left)

    The Homicide Watch team will guest teach a class or lecture for an audience of your choice.

    Estimated delivery: Nov 2012

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