For 27 years, Tom Jackman of the Washington Post broke crime and courts stories ranging from the 2002 D.C. Sniper case to the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting to the 2017 shooting of unarmed motorist Bijan Ghaisar.
With Wednesday’s announcement that the Post laid off one-third of its staff, including cuts to its local beat, WTOP asked Jackman about the importance of news organizations maintaining robust local coverage, including crime and courts reporting.
“People want to know what’s going on in their community — they need to know,” said Jackman, who took a company buyout in summer 2025. “They’re paying for it — their police department, their courts, their prosecutors.”
‘You’ve got to get out there and dig’: What goes into reporting on local crime
Even before the recent popularity of true crime podcasts, Jackman said local reporters have realized the importance of research, sifting through court records and speaking to witnesses and sources familiar with the prosecution and defense. That’s what makes a story newsworthy, compelling and human.
“This is someone who’s been hurt, or felt loss — someone that we as readers and watchers can empathize with,” Jackman said. “We feel horrible for people that have had bad things happen to them.”
Crimes affect people, Jackman said.
“What drives many of these stories is the feeling of loss and pain that so many people endure when encountering the criminal justice system,” Jackman said.
If a storyline is interesting, a local reporter doesn’t just wait for a trial to occur.
“It’s not just a matter of going to the courthouse and sitting there and waiting for them to present things to you,” Jackman said. “You’ve got to get out there and dig.”
In many cases, a reporter will have to travel to a local circuit or district court clerk’s office to have access to filings.
“Motions in advance of a case are super important because it’s both sides trying to get at what they’re trying to prove,” Jackman said. “Local reporters are the ones who go to the courthouse, who dig it out, talk to people to help explain it and explain what it means — and losing local reporters means you lose that kind of knowledge for readers and listeners.”
He listed the D.C. Sniper case as an example of a case where reporters stayed ahead by looking for court filings that could telegraph what would happen next before the trial.
“In the sniper cases, both in Prince William and in Fairfax County, the pretrial motions to suppress the confession of Lee Malvo and to have John Muhammad examined for mental health were absolutely critical to how those cases went — and those were first dug out by the locals,” he said.
He said reporters with institutional knowledge of the court systems in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. can provide context to how local elections affect the local criminal justice system by “letting people know what their prosecutors are doing, and how police police their communities.”
“It’s hard to see unless you’re on the ground, watching it, getting examples, talking to people — that’s what local reporters do.”
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