Firearm violence is largely covered in the media as a crime issue focused on individual shooting events. But experts assert that reframing firearm violence as a broader public health issue is crucial to finding policy and community solutions aimed at preventing deaths and injury from guns.
Join AHCJ and the National Press Club Journalism Institute at 11:30 a.m. ET on Friday, Feb. 9, for a conversation among experts and journalists on where to find the best data and research on firearm and gun deaths for your reporting.
In this 75-minute webinar, we’ll explore the gaps, go-to resources, and facts and myths about firearms and firearm ownership. Participants will also learn:
- The differences among firearm violence, such as what is a mass casualty event versus a mass shooting.
- Where to find new research on firearm violence.
- How news coverage of firearm violence impacts victims and frontline health workers.
- How to move thinking of firearm violence as “the crime beat” to more nuanced coverage across beats.
February 9, 2024 @ 11:30 am – 12:45 pm EST
Kaitlin Washburn is AHCJ’s health beat leader for firearm violence and trauma and a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. She was a gun violence reporter for two years in Missouri for The Kansas City Star as a Report for America corps member. Previously, Washburn was an agriculture reporter covering the omnipresent industry in California’s Central Valley for The Sun-Gazette, also as a part of RFA. Previously, Washburn had internships at the Morning Call in Pennsylvania, the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C. and The Oregonian in Portland. She spent three years as a researcher for Investigative Reporters and Editors, based at The University of Missouri.
Jessica Beard, M.D., is a trauma surgeon at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow, and Director of Research for The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting. Her research examines the perspectives of firearm-injured people on media reports of their injuries and seeks to define, measure, and support minimization of harmful reporting on community firearm violence.
Abené Clayton is a reporter in the Guardian’s California office and is the lead reporter on the newspaper’s “Guns & Lies in America” series, which launched in 2019 and focuses on the impacts of and solutions to community violence. She started covering gun violence in her hometown of Richmond, California, and is now based in Los Angeles where she covers the people who live where shootings and homicides happen most.
Jennifer Mascia is a senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace, the only newsroom that exclusively covers gun violence, which launched in 2015. She previously reported on gun violence for The New York Times, where she began her career as a news assistant. She served as the lead writer for the Times’s annual Neediest Cases campaign, which profiles New Yorkers in need, and wrote and produced The Gun Report, a daily tally of gun violence victims in America that ran for a year and a half after the Sandy Hook shooting.