After the murder of a reporter in Las Vegas, his latest investigation was not forgotten

The journalists in the newsroom of Las Vegas Review-Journal in Nevada they were grieving when reporter Lizzie Johnson arrived last November.

His colleague, veteran Review-Journal reporter Jeff German, had been found stabbed to death outside his suburban home on September 3. Johnson, who works for The Washington Posthad flown in from Washington to finish the latest story German had been working on.

When Johnson’s editor asked her if she wanted to take over the investigation, she “immediately” said yes. “I felt like a great honor to be asked to help do something so important,” she explained to the voice of america.

While Johnson took over that coverage, German’s colleagues focused on covering the police investigation of Robert Telles, who is charged with murder with a deadly weapon.

The former Clark County public administrator had been the subject of a report by German about alleged mismanagement at Telles’ office.

Telles, who had lost a re-election bid in June, pleaded not guilty at a hearing in October.

the end story

At the time of his murder, German was working on a new story, about an alleged Ponzi scheme.

“It’s one of the last stories he wanted to do and he didn’t get a chance to do it, and that shouldn’t die with him,” Johnson said.

That story finally broke last month: a collaboration between Johnson and the photographer at the Review-Journal Rachel Aston, published on the websites of both outlets.

The investigations described how an alleged $500 million Ponzi scheme targeting Mormon investors ended in a gun battle at a desert mansion.

To the executive editor of Review-JournalGlenn Cook, “It was not only to honor Jeff’s legacy that we made sure his stories were finished, but also so that his murder did not silence important stories.”

In 2022, at least 67 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a sharp increase from the 2021 figures.

But the murder of journalists in the United States is not common. CPJ has documented 14 cases in the country since the nonprofit organization began tracking deaths in 1992.

Although the Ponzi scheme story has been completed, German’s murder prevents him from telling any more stories, Cook said.

“The community won’t be able to get the kind of stories that Jeff spent reporting during his career,” he said.

German’s murder is also unique in what it may mean for protective laws, both in Nevada and across the country, according to Cook. These laws protect journalists from being forced to reveal information such as the identity of their sources.

He Review-Journal says city police illegally seized German’s phone, which may contain sensitive information, including the identities of confidential sources.

In January, the news outlet asked a judge to impose sanctions on city police for failing to inform the newspaper that investigators had searched German’s cellphone. The decision will now go to the Nevada Supreme Court after a judge denied the request.

Police have said that access to the reporter’s devices is necessary to understand the motivation for his murder.

The situation could cause confidential sources to think twice before speaking to the media, Cook said.

“Having a colleague brutally murdered is bad enough,” Cook said. “But the fact that the murder of Jeff German now threatens the rights and freedoms of the press is outrageous and really has us, as a news organization, absolutely determined to make sure that Jeff’s legacy is upholding the First Amendment and not a harmful judicial precedent that hurts journalism everywhere.”

media solidarity

When journalists are murdered, the stories they were working on go unpublished unless other journalists step in to fill them in, says French journalist Laurent Richard.

To address that, he founded the nonprofit organization Forbidden Stories, which finishes the stories of journalists who have been killed or jailed.

“If no one continues the work of the murdered journalists, it is a huge threat to democracy,” Richard told the VOA from Paris. “Whether it’s in Las Vegas or Mexico City, the work of every murdered reporter must continue.”

If a story isn’t completed, then the killer gets what he wanted, Richard said. His organization has the mission of “defeating impunity with collaborative journalism.”

“It’s even counterproductive to kill a journalist if you know others will regroup and carry on with their work,” Richard said.

for johnson’s The Postresearching the story meant balancing the typical challenges of reporters with the reality that he was assigned the story only because another journalist had died.

“There were days when, if I allowed myself to think about it too much, it overwhelmed me,” Johnson said.

He tried to focus on tracking down sources and documents, but explained, “There were always these moments at the end of the day where I was wrapping up and I was like, ‘The only reason I’m on this story is because someone died.’ That’s really something of a lot of weight”.

Visiting the Las Vegas newsroom helped Johnson feel more connected to German.

“I felt like I was a lot closer to him and closer to his death after that,” she said. “I got to see his handwriting, and I got to see the desk he sat at every day. I could see how he organized things. So she felt a lot more real after that.”

Johnson said he struggles to find the words to convey how important he felt to be contributing to German’s legacy.

“We got involved in this work because we feel drawn to holding power accountable, to exposing wrongdoing,” he said. “To think that a journalist would be killed in the course of doing that, that’s hard. And then thinking that his work would die with it doesn’t seem right to me either.

The newsroom of the Review-Journal was filled with “tremendous pride” when the story finally broke last month, Cook said. But it was also bittersweet.

“There was also a solemnity in knowing that this was Jeff’s last story,” Cook said, “and you wish with every fiber of your being that the author at the top was Jeff German.”

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