Most decisions about the legal system are made locally. So, over the last several years, The Marshall Project has invested in local news. Our reporters have dug into systemic issues within the justice systems in Cleveland, Ohio, and Jackson, Mississippi, to bring them to the attention of the public as well as the local elected officials with the power to make change.
This year, we’re excited to launch The Marshall Project - St. Louis. We’ve already had a head start exposing how the system is falling short. Last year, The Marshall Project collaborated with St. Louis Public Radio on an investigation into the more than 1,000 unsolved homicides in St. Louis over the past decade. The investigation focused on the police department’s failure to close cases due to a shortage of resources and botched investigations by several detectives. That investigation was critical to exposing the lax oversight of the department’s homicide unit, as well as the racial disparity in whose cases got solved.
But for the families at the center of the investigation, the fact that so many cases have gone unsolved isn’t new. Stories like our Unsolved series raise important questions about our work: Could we also use our storytelling skills to directly address the grief that many of these families feel for their loved one, or their frustration at the lack of answers all these years later?
 to ask us a question or tell us about your experiences with the St. Louis justice system — from policing to jail and the courts and prisons.](https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/af4d224a/104089/1140x/)
Engagement reporting aims to bridge the gap between our accountability work and the community by using journalism to provide additional resources and information to serve the people we often write about. As a local reporter, this means producing work that responds to or meets a need in St. Louis or across Missouri — whether that’s an investigative podcast or an explanatory comic — as well as work that brings people together across city and county lines.
In my role as engagement reporter, I have two primary responsibilities: Making sure our work addresses topics that people in St. Louis and across Missouri actually care about, and figuring out how best to communicate our work to the community, and especially to people most impacted by the criminal justice system.
In our other local newsrooms, engagement work has looked like a Q&A to help people navigate the arraignment and bail process in Hinds County, Mississippi, and an election guide to the candidates running for county judge in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In both areas, reporters have engaged directly with people who would benefit from the information by hosting town halls to share their findings with residents and distributing fliers to local organizations that work with the criminal justice system.
These are just a few examples of the many forms engagement work can take here. We decide what resources to make by listening to communities. The responsive nature of the work means what we create varies from place to place, and newsroom to newsroom.
Our engagement work is community-informed, but journalistic independence is paramount. Here are a few things you should know about working with us:
- We are journalists, not lawyers, activists or social workers. That means while we’re committed to using every reporting tool we have to create resources community members find useful, we do not offer legal opinions, financial advice, direct aid or promote specific policy agendas.
- Fairness, accuracy and transparency are our top priorities. This means we never hide the fact that we are journalists or what we’re working on. It also means that while we take all allegations of wrongdoing seriously, we can’t simply “take someone’s word for it” without investigating all the facts ourselves. We do not publish rumors or information that can’t be verified.
- We cover criminal justice issues. Our work intersects with many other important topics, like climate change, public policy and the health care system. But we don’t cover everything, and we direct most of our time and energy to systemic issues and trends rather than writing about a single event. So while we give consideration to every idea, question or concern we receive, our focus remains on telling stories that illuminate the region’s justice system, from policing and courts to prisons and jails.
- We love collaboration. Almost every story we write here is copublished with another journalism organization, either on television, radio, online or in a newspaper or magazine — like this story one of our reporters wrote about conditions in the St. Francois County Jail, published in partnership with the Riverfront Times. We’re not competitive, and are most interested in telling stories that no one else is covering as a way to add something new and helpful to the media ecosystem.
- We want to get to know you! Unlike investigative reporting, where stories can be built off anonymous tips and data collected from bureaucratic agencies, engagement reporting is strongest when journalists have an intimate understanding of who we’re writing for — and about. Particularly in a local newsroom, understanding what people here want to learn, and how you get your news, is paramount to our work.
Since this work is built on trust and transparency, I want to share a few things about myself, too.
Before coming to The Marshall Project - St. Louis, I covered criminal justice at The Boston Globe, where I was the newspaper’s police accountability reporter and then state courts reporter. I investigated police misconduct — including a police officer with a track record of reckless driving who totaled a woman’s car during a police chase — and also extensively covered the state’s reentry programs and access to higher education in prisons. The criminal justice project I’m most proud of, though, is a podcast miniseries I reported about women who fall in love with men in prison, and how they overcome the barriers the justice system creates to family, relationships and intimacy.
I’m excited to bring my curiosity and skills covering criminal justice issues to St. Louis. With the closing of the Workhouse in St. Louis, and the opening of the prison nursery in Vandalia, the state’s prisons and jails are at an inflection point. There’s no better time to study the conditions of these facilities, from access to medical care to educational opportunities.
Most of all, I am looking forward to hearing from you. Whether you work in law enforcement in Missouri, have been detained in the St. Louis jail, volunteered at a prison a couple times, were incarcerated, have a friend or family member behind bars, or have been the victim of a crime — your perspective matters, and is crucial to improving our understanding of the system.
You can always reach me via email or find me on Twitter/X @itsivyscott (I don’t use it much, but DM me if you’d prefer to chat over the secure messaging platform, Signal!).
