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Orange County Register reporter Larry Welborn was 25 when he covered a woman's suspicious death in 1974 and never believed the official ruling of suicide. He gathered string off and on in the years after—interviewing family members and cops and building files of evidence pointing to the woman's former apartment manager—and was present when Neveda authorities arrested the manager last year. It all turned into an eight-day Register series, Murder by Suicide?, that Editor & Publisher gives the background on.
The news peg for the eight-part feature: The arrest of a murder suspect. The lesson for journalists: Never give up on a story...Overcoming his aversion to writing in the first person, Welborn created a serial story that interweaved case specifics, developments spurred by his own relentless newsgathering, and his personal reflections.