Every week, Jill Leovy writes two to three lengthy entries into her three-month-old blog. If she wanted to, Jill could easily write a post an hour and still never run out of content. This is because the homicide rate in Los Angeles is 1100 victims a year and Jill's goal is to give visibility to each and every one of these fatalities in her blog, The Homicide Report.

Americans glean their second hand knowledge of homicidal crime from the first five minutes of TV news and in the blaring headlines on the paper's front page. We know the minutiae of these cases by heart - Nicole Brown Simpson, OJ, Scott and Laci Peterson - spectacular cases we can discuss and debate with authority at the water cooler thanks to the generous number of column inches and sound bytes provided by eager media sources.

But, the real story of homicide in America is not splashed on the front page or given airplay in a TV news report. These stories, the murders of everyday people, warrant only one inch blips in the back pages or a brief mention, if any at all, in the 6 o'clock news.

Jill Leovy, a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, which also hosts the blog, hopes to bring these stories front and center in The Homicide Report. From the link in the blog's Frequently Asked Questions, What is The Homicide Report? - .

The report seeks to reverse an age-old paradox of big-city crime reporting, which dictates that only the most unusual and statistically marginal homicide cases receive press coverage, while those cases at the very eye of the storm -- those which best expose the true statistical dimensions of the problem of deadly violence -- remain hidden.

We know the press takes little notice of these deaths. Immense private heartbreak and shattering communal events are thus rendered footnotes or ephemera, while the phenomenon of routine killing in the public streets of a major, first-world city is diffused into virtual invisibility. The public comprehends there is an elephant in the room, but is never given more than a glimpse of its massive bulk; meanwhile the press focuses on a toenail, or the tip of a trunk.

The Homicide Report is not a continuous loop of Law and Order episodes. There are no dramatic flourishes, no twists and turns. Rather, this is a straightforward read, presenting only the basic facts of each case. An entry may include a plea for information from the public accompanied with the phone number of a police detective. Jumping out from the text here and there is an official portrait from a work ID badge and the casual snapshot of a young woman smiling from her car.

Compton: Lourdes Velasquez Martinez, 23, a Latina woman, and Jorge Armando Gonzalez, 38, a Latino man, were found dead in a home in the 1400 block of South Center Avenue in Compton about 8:30 Saturday morning, March 10. Gonzalez's brother found the bodies when he came to clean up after a party the previous evening. Both victims had gunshot wounds.

Baldwin Hills: Kim Gehring, 48, a white woman, was shot and killed in the 4300 block of Don Felipe Drive in Baldwin Hills on Friday afternoon, March 9, in what police called a murder-suicide.

Gehring's mother, who lives in the back house of a two-house property, called police about 4:45 p.m. to say that she thought her son-in-law had shot her daughter in the front house, police said. Officers from LAPD's Southwest Division responded and saw a woman lying down on the floor inside the house. They carried out a rescue operation to bring her outside, and found she had died of a multiple gunshot wounds. Her husband, Michael Robbins, 67, a black man, was later found dead at the scene. Detectives believe he shot Gehring, then turned the gun on himself. L.A. Times story

Wilmington: Daniel Urenda, 23, a Latino man, was shot and killed in the 900 block of Lagoon Avenue in Wilmington about 1 p.m. Thursday, March 8. Police learned of the killing Thursday afternoon when a woman walked into LAPD's Harbor Division station and told them the killer was her son, Edward Scaroni, 22. She directed police to the address where the killing took place; detectives found victim Urenda inside. Police tracked down the suspect in his home near the intersection of East First Street and Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach and surrounded him. He barricaded himself for three hours inside, then surrendered. Police said he had a history of mental illness.

The Homicide Report is more than a tally of murders. It is a compelling and powerful memorial, not unlike a granite wall with names of the lost inscribed into the stone face. It serves to acknowledge and honor the loss of our fellow citizens, members of a community, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers. It serves to remember someone's child, someone's friend.

More on Jill Leovy/The Homicide Report: Interview with NPR's On the Media