It may not hold a Roman candle to being a perennial winner of awards and journalist-of-the-year nominations from the likes of the Los Angeles Press Club, but at least the fine investigative reporting of frequent Weekly contributor Christine Pelisek has received national exposure.
Moments ago, CNN's Rick Sanchez named Pelisek the “Most Intriguing Person of the Day.”
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“This lady used to wait tables and write about . . .
minor league hockey in Canada?” the burly anchorman said incredulously. “But today, she is the talk of the
investigative journalism world for her reports on a string of old
serial murders that connected to some new murders in Los Angeles.”
That's a reference to the “Grim Sleeper” case that the LA Weekly staff writer resurrected from obscurity and stayed on like a bloodhound.
“She
brought the case to public attention–this is good journalism–and two days ago
police nabbed the serial killer suspect that she dubbed the Grim Sleeper,” Sanchez informed the masses.
“She made readers care again about some largely forgotten
victims, and her work helped police make an arrest. Good for her! That is
why Christine Pelisek is today the most intriguing person in the news.”
Among the recent Pelisek pieces picked up by LA Weekly's sister paper in Orange County was last month's cover story “Killing for the Cartel” and her dissection of serial killer Rodney Alcala's latest attempt to get off Death Row.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.