Here Be Monsters: Empathy and Crime Writing

This 90-minute webinar with a National Magazine Award-winning journalist will help true crime storytellers raise the ethical bar of an often exploitative genre.

In an era where a new, buzzy true crime story seems to hit the internet every week – either as a magazine story, podcast, or documentary – how do we as storytellers manage the myriad thorny ethical questions that come with reporting and writing these pieces? How do empathy and crime reporting fit together? How much empathy is too much? Do we always have to pick a side? And what happens when you empathize with both? These are  questions that come up when covering perpetrators and victims of crime. Katherine will draw on seminal work by other journalists to outline the unexpected ways empathy can be an asset and a detriment in crime writing.

Includes: Live 90-minute lesson with Q&A; password to re-watch the webinar anytime you want; a tip-sheet on ethical true crime writing.
Meet the instructor