Tamron Hall: Journalist, Crime Writer, and Advocate Against Domestic Violence
The media industry is a microcosm of America. Black people, especially Black women, are not given the same opportunities to succeed as white people. Whether it’s written journalism or television news, the lack of diversity in the field is a lose/lose situation for the media companies as well as news consumers. By silencing the voices of Black journalists, the media corporations inherently detach from news consumers who may feel more connected to someone that looks like them.
Despite these hurdles, the multi-faceted Tamron Hall managed to have a successful career in journalism that has spanned over 30 years. After receiving her degree in Broadcast Journalism from Temple University back in 1992, Hall became a general assignment reporter for local news television stations such as KBTX in Bryant, Texas and then WFLD-TV in Chicago. In 2007, she became a fill-in anchor at MSNBC and even managed to score an interview with Barack Obama before he announced his candidacy for president in 2008.
In the height of her journalism career in 2004, Hall and her family suffered a tragedy. Hall’s sister, Renate, was found floating face-down in her pool beaten and bludgeoned to death. Though the crime remains ‘unsolved,’ Hall told People Magazine that Renate was in an abusive relationship:
“Do we know who did this to her as defined by a court of law? No. But I can tell you I witnessed an act of violence and there were only two people in that room.”
Hall suffered feelings of tremendous guilt about her sister’s death. However, she turned those feelings of guilt into action—becoming an advocate to end domestic violence. First working with groups such as Safe Horizon and Day One, she then landed a show on Investigation Discovery called Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall. In the show’s introduction, she mentions her sister’s murder and how she’d like to help other families go through the grieving process after their loved one was a victim of crime.
In October 2021, Hall published a fiction book, the first of a series, called As the Wicked Watch, about a reporter who tracks down a serial killer who targets Black women in Chicago. After the book’s publication, Hall was approached by Court TV to do a new show called Someone They Knew. Hall told Forbes Magazine that the name of the show holds personal significance:
“Early on in the investigation [of Renate’s death], I was told by investigators flat out this was someone she knew. We couldn’t prove it but they strongly believed that the person of interest was someone she knew. So when I saw that the team behind this show were focused on what we can learn from these cases versus ‘the glam crime’ that’s become so popular and that I’m deeply sensitive to and I think viewers at home have become sensitive to it, that they were going to take care of the story and take care of what we would get from it, that’s when I decided to join forces with them”
Hall’s new show on Court TV is set to air sometime this year, and she is currently writing the second book of the As the Wicked Watch series.
