This week, a reporter from San Francisco public radio station KALW is spending her days in Oakland courtrooms, taking in all of the action (and inaction). She’s reporting for a story funded by individuals through the website Spot.us, on the daily activity in a criminal court — and she’s blogging about what she sees, letting us in on both the process of reporting a story like this and the day-to-day workings of a court that the media usually misses in its 800-word story about a murder conviction.
So far, reporter Rina Palta has seen some high-level cases, more than one might expect from the daily grind of a criminal court. She wrote on Tuesday about watching arguments from both sides of a death penalty sentencing hearing. The proceedings piqued her curiosity about jury selection and she spent the next day watching lawyers interview potential jurors in a case where the state was seeking to label a man a sexually violent predator, making him eligible for lifetime civil commitment.
Together, Spot.us and KALW are exploring a new method of covering our criminal justice system, and there’s great potential here. Criminal justice reform can’t happen until the system’s failures and successes become human stories to which we can connect. Crowd-funded reporting offers a chance to shine a spotlight on the invisible people within the system.
Palta will be blogging during her two weeks in the Alameda courts and will be reporting on what she finds on KALW’s Crosscurrents show.
But the project won’t finish there — if you like what you hear, please chip in $20 toward the next piece of this project, a report on parolee integration in East Oakland and San Francisco’s Mission. There’s $959 to go to fully fund this second installment of the story, and the Harnisch Foundation is matching all donations — so we need less than $500 from donors to make part two happen.
Photo (not the Oakland court) by Maveric2003