by Drew Tewksbury

The idea was simple but ambitious.

L.A. Times staff writer Jill Leovy set out to record every L.A. County homicide for a year on the newspaper's Homicide Blog.

This week, she reflected on her year of telling the stories of Los Angeles' unheard victims:

"This newspaper typically covers about 10% of the homicides in Los Angeles County each year. They are often the most sensational or shocking: a baby hit by a stray bullet, or a celebrity murder. But for the last year, the paper's Website, latimes.com, has recorded every homicide. It was my idea. I reported on crime for the paper, and I wanted readers to see all the killings — roughly 1,000 violent deaths each year, mostly of young Latinos and, most disproportionately, of young black men."

Leovy faced the glaring truths masked in the haze of media statistics: Los Angeles has natural disaster of violence every year.

The Homicide Blog isn't the first technological reaction to grieving. (In photography's infancy, books of the dead cataloged photos of the deceased with the hopes that they would live on as images.) It is, however, the first attempt to create a digital tombstone, an infinite epitaph, and, as Leovy states, "an unlimited space for sorrow."

But take a look at the Homicide Blog for yourself. How do you feel about the numbers? Should other cities start similar blogs? What about the racial break down — do you think that is necessary?

Could the Homicide Map reinforce the invisible boundaries of perceived "good" and "bad" neighborhoods?