Making History at the Nation's Capitol

The view from my window

Reporting on True Crime as a History Major

 

Baltimore City Circuit Court 

This August, I began working as an intern for Baltimore Witness, a journalism website that reports on the rates of violent crime in the city and criminal trials in the Baltimore City Circuit Court. As a history major who happens to have a passion for exposing the reality of true crime, I jumped at the opportunity to begin working weekly as a reporting intern this Fall. The main components of the internship are sitting in on court cases as a member of the press and diligently recording the events of each proceeding or jury trial.

The next step is inputting the case into the Baltimore Witness database, to ensure the crime statistics the publication is gathering are accurate. Finally, I write daily articles on each case that I cover from an unbiased and impartial perspective. Each piece is published on the official website and is posted to social media outlets to promote journalism on lesser known cases and proceedings in Baltimore City. 

This has been my first venture into the judicial world and into the field of journalism, so I found myself having to justify how this internship has any relevance to the field of history. I argue that reporting on the criminal justice system in one of the most infamous cities in the country is incredibly relevant to public history. So much of history and the discourse of social science is based on the veracity of ones research and the accuracy of data, as well as the establishment of a sound methodology when it comes to sourcing material. 

The stakes of my research, and all of the research done here at Baltimore Witness by its editors, data analysts, and reporters, are pretty high. Baltimore Witness is often one of the only, if not the only, publications present during an average day of hearings at both of the circuit court houses. It's our responsibility to promote unprejudiced work and handle cases with care. 

Through my analysis of the murder trials I cover and my hands-on exploration of crime statistics, I'm starting to gain a better understanding of the legal factors and historical precedent that have been set within the Maryland judicial and penal systems. 

Just last week, I was able to get a bird's eye view into the wildly popular Adnan Syed case when his infamous 1999 murder conviction was overturned. That same week, I was the sole reporter in the courtroom on multiple murder trials that had not received the same degree of attention from the public. The sociological factors that inform crime also inform which defendants get press coverage, thus reinforcing historical archetypes regarding race, gender, crime, and society as a whole. 

I've found it immensely rewarding to report on unknown cases and to develop a better understanding of the mechanisms within the flawed justice system through a more nuanced lens. 

My aim here, in addition to accurate reporting, is to learn more about how crime data and news has been collected and disseminated over time to the civilians of Baltimore. My work with Ashleigh Joplin, the senior editor at Baltimore Witness, has also taught me how to develop a more intersection and interdisciplinary approach regarding my work as an intern and how I can apply this experience to my research as history student at UMBC.

At the moment, I'm developing a framework for a research project about crime and gender through my work with the organization and the data points I can reference within the archives of the website. This way I'll be able to compare and juxtapose my sources to show how elements of crime have shifted over the past few decades.

Below are a few of the articles I've written over the past month based on my court reporting: 

https://baltimorewitness.org/prosecutor-calls-expert-dna-analyst-to-testify-after-murder-defendant-rejects-plea/

https://baltimorewitness.org/murder-victim-was-dragged-to-her-death-by-boyfriend-prosecutor-says/

https://baltimorewitness.org/jury-begins-deliberation-in-2019-execution-style-murder/

It's Not Rocket Science...Right? Madelyn Pollack #1

When I first told people I would be interning at NASA for the summer, a frequent response I got was, “Are you going to be an astronaut?” As amazing as I imagine that experience would be, my involvement with NASA was at a totally different level. My time was spent with the History Office, learning about — you guessed it — the history of NASA and the events that contributed to its inception.

In my job as an intern, the word “history” carried a lot of definitions and responsibilities. History was the crafting of “On This Day” @NASAHistory social media posts. History was laughing (a lot) at the disbelieving and exacting trolls on those posts. History was reading manuscripts, combing for any standout issues in pieces at various points in the History Division’s lengthy publication process. History was making personal connections with professionals in the public history and space history fields. History meant historical research and historical writing, but a whole lot of science to go along with it, too.

Despite being at an institution well-known for its contributions to STEM (sound familiar, UMBC?), there was a lot of value in being a contributor with a humanities background. It enabled me to break beyond the limits of single-field work. I might be a history major, but my history experience with NASA was unquestionably interdisciplinary. It’s true that I’m not a rocket scientist, but I now have a better understanding and appreciation of the sciences and the individuals who use it to change the world.

My favorite part of my NASA internship is that I got to learn something new every single day. I entered into the summer with the knowledge that Galileo was an astronomer and Pluto was no longer a planet, and not much else. As such, I treasured everything I absorbed, because there was no academic pressure on me to learn: I was learning for the sake of learning, and I loved that.

Although my internship was done completely virtually, I had the opportunity to go downtown to Headquarters a handful of times due to my proximity. You can bet I was nervous, but physically being at the place where some of the magic happens was a really special experience.

For my next post, I’m going to talk about my research experience, and how I turned a decidedly STEM topic into a historical research project.