Heat City

It has been an exciting past week here at Heat City. Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner has been on the witness stand for five days, and takes it again for his sixth and final day today. That means his eight-count murder trial is nearing its end. The trial has been the centerpiece of this blog since it launched it back on Jan. 5, and I’ve been able to continue covering it live from the courtroom because of reader support, both financial and moral.

As it stands today, readers have donated $475 to help me continue original reporting you generally won’t find anywhere else. That’s a little over $100 a week since I began taking donations. Along with your gifts, many of you have said you like stories about local media happenings, so I’ve been trying to post more of them.

Lastly, the work that you’ve supported has been getting some attention from media watchers. A crew from the local PBS affiliate, KAET-TV (Channel 8), came out to the Maricopa County courthouse last week and interviewed me for a segment titled “Future of Journalism” on their nightly news magazine , Horizon. The crew also talked to the folks at the online Capitol news startup, the Arizona Guardian, as well as a journalism professor at Arizona State University. The segment airs tonight at 7 p.m.

I continue to be flattered and surprised by the generous support from readers of this site. This week, less than two weeks into accepting donations, your contributions surpassed my startup costs for HEAT CITY. I originally spent $289.75 to buy a domain name, get a year of hosting, pay for a little card that lets me access the Internet from anywhere, and park for one week near the downtown Phoenix courthouse where Dale Hausner is on trial.

Well, this week, a few generous donations brought the total giving to $300, essentially reimbursing me for those costs. So I owe you all a big thanks. This website has been a labor of love from the beginning. Readers deserve quality information and news, and I’m trying to deliver it, hopefully with some success.

I wouldn’t be able to do it without reader support. Even if you can’t give a dollar or two, your e-mails, links, comments and story tips help immensely.

The kind folks over at ABC 15 are having me back again tomorrow morning for their show, Daybreak, to talk about the Serial Shooter trial. Samuel Dieteman, the alleged accomplice in the killing spree, wrapped up his final day of testimony today against his former roommate, Dale Hausner, the Mesa man accused of inciting the violence.

I’m not sure yet what I’ll be talking about, but it will probably include some of the final statements he made this morning while answering questions from the jury. Tune in to KNXV-TV (Channel 15) at about 6:45 a.m. to watch. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have a surprise tidbit for you. I’ll try to think of one.

Funding update

After I spent days running into a roadblocks with the comment system built into Movable Type, a friend of mine suggested I use Disqus to power the discussion on HEAT CITY. It was good advice. The service was easy to install, allowed readers to create profiles and will hopefully lead to solid, substantive discussions on the site.

Use the space to talk about the subjects, add to the stories and correct my mistakes. I want to hear from you, and others do, too. I won’t make any rules, really, but use your common sense. Look at it this way: The HEAT CITY community helped me find the tool to power the discussion, and hopefully the same community will put it to use.

It has been just four days since I launched HEAT CITY, and already the response has been overwhelming. Many of you have sent e-mails, tweets and Facebook messages with your well wishes. Some of you have offered your support in other ways, like passing along story tips and leads. The ABC affiliate in Phoenix, KNXV-TV (Channel 15) is bringing me on its Daybreak show tomorrow morning for the third-straight day to talk about the Serial Shooter trial, which represents the main thrust of my coverage so far.

Early this morning, shortly after wrapping up things on television and before heading to the trial, I added a little button to the right-hand column of the site. It asks you to help support my work in another way: financially.

The idea behind it is that quality, in-depth reporting takes time and money. The broadband card I use to access the internet in the courtroom, for instance, costs $40 a month. Government agencies in Arizona charge as much as 50 cents a page for public records. And sometimes, you just have to buy a source lunch to get the inside track on a big story. (Some of the biggest stories of my career have been spilled over burgers or beers.)