Carrie Ching's blog

The Online News Association announced their finalists for the 2011 Online Journalism Awards this week, and The Civil Rights Cold Case Project is a finalist in the Specialty Site Journalism category. We're proud of all that this project has achieved, and we're very honored to be considered for the award.

Former state trooper James Bonard Fowler pleaded guilty today (Monday, Nov. 15) to manslaughter in the 1965 killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Fowler, 77, who pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter charges, will serve six months in prison under the plea deal.

Reporter Admin talks to the hosts of The Takeaway, a national online news program, about a 2007 federal initiative to investigate and solve "cold case" murders from the civil rights era, and why so few cases are being pursued.

Listen to the program:

Over the past 20 years, every unsolved civil rights murder case that has been reopened and successfully prosecuted in the South was the direct result of an investigation initiated by a journalist.

So the FBI’s decision to close, without prosecution or further disclosure, all but a few of the 108 unsolved murder cases it began re-examining three years ago, only highlights the vital need for investigative reporting that can find the truth, tell the stories and fill in the gaps in our nation’s history.