True crime reporter tells students about the craft

Gina Barton spends her days interviewing criminals and racing to the scene of the crime, working as a criminal justice investigative reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Recently, Barton has taken up a story that sounds like it’s straight out of a mystery novel. She created a seven-week serial called “Unsolved,” and every Wednesday of each week, there is a new part to the story.

Barton is changing the way reporters report the news. This “Unsolved” series involves extensive multimedia online. It’s not just an article, but video, animation, and podcast too.

The story itself is about a 40-year old-case, where a 14-year-old boy, John Zera, was abducted from Franklin High School and found eight days later dead in Whitnall Park. Barton said in regards to working as a criminal justice reporter, “Truth really is stranger than fiction.”

Barton had finished her original first draft of this story in April/ May, and has since gone through six more rewrites of it. The goal for this multimedia series is for people to go out and buy the newspaper or go online and read about it. The goal is to get people interested.

Barton described one of her first crime stories like she remembers it  yesterday. In Indiana, 10-plus years ago, two men robbed and shot up a liquor store and laundromat killing one person in their wake, and injuring another.

Barton spoke to a freshman class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee of students interested in media careers. The class is a Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies Living Learning Community. Through LLCs, students at UWM live together in the dorms, organized around a common interest. Barton is also an ad hoc lecturer at UWM who teaches news reporting.

Tess Klein, a freshman studying journalism at UWM, said, “I can’t believe how intense journalism can be!”

Besides dealing with the occasional crime, Barton also has written extensively on law enforcement. Barton wrote an article entitled “Both Sides Of The Law,” investigating police officers with criminal histories. Some cops had abused their wives, others had DUI, and some had anger problems.