Q&A: Reporting on crime…and loving it

By Carley Dryden, CQS '08
Special to chipsquinn.org

Posted: March 5, 2009

Carley Dryden

For many young journalists, cops reporting is the rookie job, the first step on a path toward New Yorker magazine profiler or Washington Post foreign correspondent. For longtime journalist Jody Lawrence-Turner, day cops reporter is a dream job, one she’s held at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., since 2005.

She has written a two-day series on gangs, a month-long series on child abuse and a year-long series on regional unsolved murders, which prompted the state crime lab to process a DNA sample after four years of inaction. As the public safety reporter in the Spokane Valley bureau, Lawrence-Turner exposed an incompetent fire marshal who was later demoted, and she was the first to report a building contractor who bamboozled citizens out of more than $1 million.

A native of Salem, Ore., Lawrence-Turner attended a community college in Oregon (where she became editor of the school paper) before transferring to Western Oregon University and receiving a bachelor’s degree in humanities.

After stints copy editing, designing pages and writing features at smaller papers, Lawrence-Turner went to work for her hometown paper, the Statesman-Journal. While there, she was introduced to night cops reporting and was instantly hooked.

“Every day was a learning experience, every day still is a learning experience,” she said. “You never know what you’re going to write about, what kind of challenges you’re going to face. You never know when you’re going to crack emotionally.”

Jody Lawrence-Turner

Lawrence-Turner then moved on to The Spokesman-Review -- and it doesn’t look like she’ll be giving up her cops beat anytime soon.

“I’m a truth seeker and I get to be one of the first to know. I get to experience things that other people will never get to experience and I get to meet people that I would never otherwise get to meet. It’s a great job,” she said.

She recently discussed her passion for cops reporting, how her emulsion into the world of crime has affected her emotionally and how she’ll stay strong if the newspaper business crumbles.

Carley Dryden: Why are you so passionate about cops reporting?

Jody Lawrence-Turner: My upbringing was very diverse. I was exposed to law enforcement and criminal elements. Both were a part of my life. Neither frightened me. I felt really comfortable being in the middle of it. There are bad people in both arenas—people that have no conscience who will kill for no reason, and then cops who become cops just because they want that authority. I try to look at it objectively.

Q: How do you set aside your human emotions and bias when reporting on such gritty, difficult subject matters?

A: It’s all about the facts. I don’t think you should ever use your emotions. The most difficult stories for me are child abuse cases where parents literally beat the child to death. How do you not think those people are monsters? So I just focus on the facts. If there is any emotion it has to come from the people who are allowed to have that emotion, not me.

Q: How do you think covering crime has affected you?

A: At a seminar about writing and reporting on sexual violence, we were asked to write a personal essay. I wrote about covering someone who used their position of authority to abuse children. I said that that experience was one of the many dark truths that I would have to understand existed. That’s what I’d say cops reporting has done to me. I used to be a lot more gullible, trusting, and believe that people were generally good. Now, I think people are mixed. I’m not confident that any person I see is any one way any more.

Q: What story are you most proud of?

A: One that I got to take total poetic license on. It was about a group of four huge pigs that got loose in a suburban area. They were black and white pigs, so I made them out to be a gang, out destroying stuff and they intimidated people. It was a hilarious story. I really had to take myself out of writing just about facts and be creative. I got so many comments on that story.

Q: Is it hard to write features now that you’re so invested in facts and numbers?

A: If you took a sample of my stories over a month, you can see there is a mix. One story I’m very proud of is about firefighters being twice as likely to get cancer. That took conversations with people you wouldn’t normally have. I was caring enough to say “Why are you coughing?” to a firefighter at a fire. He said he hadn’t gotten over his cough since the last fire. It triggered me to think, “Why is that?”

Here are people that help the general public every day and they’re getting sicker than anybody they help. It wasn’t a watchdog story, but it was an important story. It gave firefighters resources they may not have known were out there. The gratifying part is that I got e-mails from firefighters who have been sick, who are going through chemotherapy, or people who lost loved ones that were firefighters who were like, “Wow, it all of a sudden makes sense to me.”

Q: How do you come up with such story ideas? Is it just natural curiosity?

A: Any reporter will eventually say, “It’s good luck.” Part of it is personality. I’m a compassionate person so I will ask, “Why are you crying? Why do you look so down?” I like the word curious, because that’s nicer than nosy. But being a journalist is a license to be both. Yes, I’ve been naturally curious my whole life.

Q: What would you like to see change in cops reporting?

A: I wish I could search my own police records. I don’t like the way the system is in that the reporter can’t do what people used to be able to do—go in and rifle through reports. Significant stories come out of that. Now more than ever, if you don’t know someone who calls you, you may not find out because you can’t just go search those records. More documents should be available online, including court records.

Q: Are there any stories you want to tackle or techniques you want to try?

A: I’m just starting on the video/audio thing. I’m very interested to see how I’ll portray a story on camera…A story that’s always intrigued me is a story on crime families. Profile the mom, dad, kids and grandkids. Find out how does that happen and why do they continue the cycle.

Jody Lawrence-Turner and her husband, Dave, outside of their Spokane, Wash., home. They have been married nearly 20 years.

Q: Longtime journalists often tell aspiring reporters how hard it is to maintain a relationship in this career. You’ve been married for nearly 20 years. What’s the key to your success?

A: My husband is my best friend. I’ve known him since I was 18 years old. I’m 37. The way we treat each other is very much as individuals. He has a passion for music, which takes him away from me at night sometimes. If I ever tried to take that away from him, that would hurt our relationship more than allowing him to have it. So my inconsistent hours, my long days, my stress, my pain…he adapts. He gets mad sometimes. He thinks that I let work take over sometimes. But he gets to do what he wants, too, and I think that’s fair.

Q: How do you stay positive amid such a gloomy journalistic atmosphere?

A: Focus on the news of the day. If this job is going to go away, there are other jobs in journalism I can do. They might look different, they might feel different, but -- just one day at a time. There’s nothing I can do about a failing economy, lack of advertising, lack of revenue. All I can do is try to do good journalism and hope to inform people and give them the truth for as long as I can.

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