Who's dying in L.A.

National Public Radio recently did a feature on the Los Angeles Times' homicide blog. Reporter Jill Leovy explains why she started the blog back in 2007 and the truth she hoped to capture:

"The truth about homicide," she says, "is that it is black men in their 20s, in their 30s, in their 40s. The way we guide money and policy in this country, we do not care about those people. It's not described as what's central to our homicide problem, and I wanted people to see that. I wanted people to see those lives and to see that that's our real homicide problem in America.

"The money needs to go to black male argument violence," she continues. "Anything else … you're dealing with the margins of the problem, statistically, and it's not right."

-snip-

"As a middle-aged white lady, my death rate is probably 1 or 2 per 100,000 — maximum," Leovy says. "These young men are dying at 140. They're in a war zone, and the rest of us are living in a different country."

LA Times goes back to school

Graduate students at USC's journalism school will become contributors to the newly revived homicide blog at the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper announced today. From the Times:

Under the partnership, students from USC will write dispatches for the Homicide Report. Among the goals is to provide more content for the blog and to offer crime-reporting experience to student journalists from Neon Tommy, the publication of Annenberg Digital News.

Marc Cooper and Alan Mittelstaedt will be heading up the effort on USC's side.

This is the second time the Times and USC have worked together on news coverage. Last year, the Times enlisted the USC College of Letters and Sciences to help conduct a series of polls on attitudes in California.