Laura Norton Amico, 29, has an interesting job.  She is Editor-in-Chief of Homicide Watch DC, a blog website that covers homicides in DC. In her job, she investigates murders and then writes stories about deaths in DC, so that residents can get a clearer understanding of why and how murder victims die.

When Ms. Amico moved to Washington, D.C., she noticed a lot of murders in her Columbia Heights neighborhood.  So she thought it would be good to capture valuable information about these murders and make it public. As a result, she created Homicide Watch. Asked to explain her motivation, she said, “reporting on homicides is important; having info in public is important.”

The process that Ms. Amico uses to report on homicides is very complicated. The first way she gathers information is by learning about recent deaths within DC. Part of her daily routine is to “check the media, Twitter [and] Facebook” for current information about victims. She also goes down to the courts three or four times a week in order to go to arraignments, preliminary hearings and status hearings. Then, she goes home and builds her story on each individual victim.

Being a homicide reporter isn’t always easy. For a few cases, Ms Amico struggled to get information. Sometimes, the police department press releases did not have enough details about the homicide. To get around this problem, Ms. Amico turned to social networks to get more information. Another obstacle is that she does not have enough staff.  Ms. Amico said that she only has two graduate students helping her with coverage.

Doing homicide coverage requires a lot of strength. Ms. Amico remembers some of her most terrible cases such as the murder of Tawanna Barnes or Ebony Franklin, whose body was found in a trash can. When asked about whether she gets emotional, she said, “[I] certainly get sad but not depressed.”

Ms. Amico has seen a lot of different cases, but the worst cases she has seen are the ones with teenage victims. She said that “to be so young and so forgotten is so tragic.”

Ms. Amico firmly believes that all murders deserve the same amount of attention or coverage. She described one interaction with a newspaper editor, who questioned why she was choosing to cover homicides of “drug deals gone bad.” Explaining why she believed in covering all homicides, she said “they may be a drug dealer, but they still have people who want to remember them.”

Ms. Amico certainly has had an adventurous career in journalism so far. She began by covering education in California, where she covered school board meetings. Then she spent two years covering cops and crimes.

Today, Ms. Amico has a rising blog website. Even though the website has only been up for a couple of months, it has already become popular, bringing thousands of viewers on her page each day. While she’s not getting paid just yet, she said, “…there’s a lot of reward in doing this work.”  What is clear about her goals is that Ms. Amico wants to keep moving forward in the future, so that those who are forgotten can be better remembered. After all, her website’s motto is “Mark every death. Remember every victim. Follow every case.”