Category Archives: Student Media Spotlight

Sneaking into jails, dining with hitmen: True crime journalist releases memoir

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Author, podcaster and Baylor alumna Claire St. Amant explains her story to the audience during her conversation and signing event on Monday night at Fabled Bookshop & Cafe in Waco. Mary Thurmond | Lariat Photo Editor

By Josh Siatkowski
Staff Writer, The Baylor Lariat

Crime journalist, Baylor alum and newly-published author Claire St. Amant took to Fabled Bookshop Monday evening to promote her new memoir about the true crime genre: “Killer Story: The Truth Behind True Crime Television.“

St. Amant is something of an expert when it comes to true crime. She’s helped create over 20 episodes of CBS’ hit crime show “48 Hours.” She hosts not one, but two true crime podcasts. She even has a television series in the works. Now, she’s telling the story behind those stories in “Killer Story: The Truth Behind True Crime Television.”

“Killer Story” is not a memoir about the chilling shows that make their way to television screens, but one about the behind the scenes. For St. Amant, these behind the scenes stories involve a lot of “telling on myself,” as she recounts experiences like sneaking into a jail to talk to a killer, eating dinner with a hitman, looking into the “void” and “ink blot” eyes of merciless killers and even being detained herself.

Read the full story at The Baylor Lariat.

The Batt investigation: Behind the scenes, conservative influence on Aggieland soars

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Interim president Mark Welsh III speaks to students, faculty during the State of the University Address sharing the university’s new strategy and vision in Rudder Theatre on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023. (Chris Swann/The Battalion)
Interim president Mark Welsh III speaks to students, faculty during the State of the University Address sharing the university’s new strategy and vision in Rudder Theatre on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023. (Chris Swann/The Battalion)

By Nicholas Gutteridge, The Battalion Editor-in-Chief

The notification was one of a million.

She let it sit for a moment before grabbing the phone and bringing it to her face, expecting nothing more than a question from her co-worker or a response from the student she was helping. But the email — sent from Texas A&M’s Office of Open Records — was unusual: Under the state’s Public Information Act, she was being asked for copies of her syllabi and all emails she had sent containing the words “DEI” and “transgender.”

The professor’s main confusion came from the requestor, however. It was a name she had never seen before. Who would be interested in what was ultimately a few benign emails?

Her case wasn’t unique among faculty and staff. Representatives of Texas Scorecard, a right-wing website that publishes articles about state and local politics, submitted more than 100 open records requests to Texas A&M and the System from 2022-24.

“Virtually every article they publish is not fully factual, sometimes not even close to factual,” President Mark A. Welsh III told The Battalion in a sit-down interview in November 2024. “They have never printed a retraction when we provided them the facts.”

Scorecard’s posts, however, spread like wildfire.

Read the full story at thebatt.com.