Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

In a column for the Online Quill, 2005 Ochberg Fellow Melissa Manware recalls some of the hundreds of violent deaths and rapes from her decade covering cops for the Charlotte Observer. Crime stories like these are hard, but her career has shown they are also where a reporter can have her greatest impact; if she can remain both hopeful and emotionally touched. As she recounts:

A few years ago, I wrote about Kristen Smith, a teenager who told her family that she had been molested by a relative when she was 9. Days later, I got a call from a woman in her 40s. She wanted me to know that reading Kristen’s story gave her the courage to finally talk about what happened to her. She was molested as a child and until that day had never told anyone.

That’s what made the work worth the heartache. And that’s what a reporter, especially a crime reporter, has to remember to stay positive when so many of the stories are negative.