Los Angeles Times Staff Complimented for "The Manhunt"

Davan and Marc compliment staff: 

To the staff:

Our just-concluded 5-part series “The Manhunt” was a riproaring read. It was also a testament to the talent and ambition in this newsroom, and to the collaborative spirit that makes distinguished journalism possible.

A team of reporters spent months reconstructing Christopher Dorner’s life, brief LAPD career and murderous rampage across Southern California. Kurt Streeter, Joel Rubin, Chris Goffard, Louis Sahagun and Phil Willon were the main contributors, with help from Joseph Serna, Kate Mather and Nicole Santa Cruz.

Goffard did additional reporting and took on the monumental task of writing the series, which he did to his usual elevated standard, sustaining the suspense from sentence to sentence, page to page and story to story.

The series was built on superb real-time coverage of the Dorner manhunt back in February by metro staff members too numerous to list here. Many of those reporters helped “The Manhunt” get started by providing tips and contact information.

Doug Stevens, a graphic artist in the Washington bureau, produced masterly illustrations that captured key moments in the drama and gave the series an indelible visual signature. His carefully wrought drawings, each an artwork in its own right, required arduous research and hours of pencil work. Doug was at his drawing board until late Friday night, perfecting the renderings for Sunday’s final installment.

Drex Heikes and Ashley Dunn guided the reporting on the series. Drex edited the stories, and Scott Kraft helped bring them to a high polish.

Kelli Sullivan and Michael Whitley, who have made so many of our special projects leap off the printed page, did it again on this occasion.

Stephanie Ferrell designed the digital presentation, and Soo Oh built it. The layout was elegant and spacious, and it read as easily on a smartphone as on a desktop. Videos by Don Kelsen, Irfan Khan, Don Bartletti and Marc Martin supplemented the prose storytelling. Maps by Thomas Suh Lauder brightened as you scrolled toward their place in the design, then faded as you moved deeper into the story.

On the copy desk, Steve Hensch and Jim LaVally fly-specked the prose and sculpted the headlines and decks for the newspaper and latimes.com.

Readers have responded in the most heartening terms, praising “The Manhunt” as the kind of work that gives the Los Angeles Times a privileged place in their lives.

“WOW what a work of fabulous journalism!” wrote a 35-year subscriber. “As the wife of a man who was in law enforcement, your story took me on a virtual ‘ride along.’ Thank you for your continued dedication to a newspaper I don’t ever want to be without!”

Davan and Marc


SOURCE: Brett Levy