The creator of the L.A. Times’ Homicide Report, a blog which seeks to document every murder victim in Los Angeles, will be the next person to participate in the Media Arts Speaker Series at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6.

Jill Leovy is a veteran Times editor and reporter and started the Homicide Report in 2007 as a way to list all homicide victims reported by the Los Angeles County coroner. It is now one of the most popular items on the newspaper’s website and features interactive maps and a searchable database.

Leovy will visit Pierce as part of the Pierce College Media Arts Department Speaker Series, a free program that welcomes esteemed speakers from the radio, film, journalism and website worlds.

The events are a semester-long effort funded by the Associated Students Organization. Students, faculty, staff and the community are invited. Faculty can receive Flex Credit for attending.

Refreshments will be served. Parking is available for $2 in Lot 1, near the Sheriff’s Station off Brahma Drive and Winnetka Avenue.

From the Los Angeles Times:

“The Homicide Report is a listing of all homicide victims reported by the Los Angeles County coroner. Any person who dies at the hand of another in Los Angeles County, and whose death is recorded by the coroner, is included in the report, which is updated weekly.

The report strives to augment those basic facts with additional reporting about those cases, as well as other subjects relevant to homicides.

The website was created in January 2007 by Jill Leovy, a veteran Times’ writer, as a reported blog. Leovy, the author of nearly all the unsigned posts from 2007, launched the report as a way to balance the crime coverage of the Los Angeles Times. As a practical necessity, printed editions of The Times, like those of other metropolitan newspapers, give the most attention to the most unusual, and thus statistically marginal, homicide cases.”

http://projects.latimes.com/homicide/about/

—Stefanie Frith