Talking Dateline: Conversations at CrimeCon

**Josh Mankiewicz** (0:05)
Hey, everybody, it's Josh Mankiewicz, and today we have a special edition of Talking Dateline. This week, instead of going behind the scenes of a particular episode, we want to take you back to a live conversation from CrimeCon 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, I'm known at CrimeCon as the mayor of CrimeCon. I did not give myself that title. I actually would be thrilled if I could get rid of that title and somebody else could take it. But at the moment, I have it. So I'm not the self-appointed mayor. I'm appointed by others. So at this session of CrimeCon, I sat down with Ellison Barber, who was an NBC News correspondent, but also the host of the Netflix original podcast called Allegedly. That's produced by our colleagues at NBC News Studios. Now, Ellison and I sat down and discussed all things Dateline. Everything from how Dateline began covering murder cases, to how I got my own start, to my colleague and my frenemy, Keith Morrison. I don't even like to say his name out loud. We talked about all of that. So here we go.
Hello. Hi, everybody. I cannot see you because of these lights, but I hear you out there.
So one of you made me the key to CrimeCon City key.
It says mayor on it here. I just want you to know I have it, and it's a cherished possession. Although I do believe that the mayor of CrimeCon, like other offices that we all hold dear, should probably have term limits anyway. But thank you, and wonderful to see everybody.

**Ellison Barber** (1:53)
Let's talk Dateline.

**Josh Mankiewicz** (1:55)
Yes.

**Ellison Barber** (1:56)
When you think about your career, why did you want to start covering these cases and focus on crime in the first place?

**Josh Mankiewicz** (2:02)
I did not want to start covering these cases.

**Ellison Barber** (2:04)
Really? Who made you?

**Josh Mankiewicz** (2:08)
Our now retired executive producer, a guy named David Corvo, said to me one day, like we're going to, I've been at Dateline 10 years, and we've done, as many of you probably remember, we were doing all kinds of stories within an hour, and we were doing like five or six stories within those 60 minutes, and they were all unrelated. He said to me, we're going to start trying to do these murder cases over an hour. I don't know, you are? And we're doing that? And we're thinking like, nobody's going to want to watch that.
So clearly, yeah, you want to come to me for ideas about where America is going.
And now, like, look where we are, right? So I certainly did not see this coming. But then I went to Reno, Nevada, and I did the story of Brianna Denison, who had vanished and then subsequently was found, murdered, and then we did the story again now that there had been that sort of giant change to it. And that was sort of the first, I think it was the first hour on a murder case that I did. And the reaction from the audience, there was not any mistaking that. And that was what I, and also I, I got some satisfaction out of covering that story in a way that I had not anticipated. And then we were kind of off and running because all the other stories were getting a sort of similar response and it was a, I suddenly realized we had sort of tapped into something that I had not seen out there. So I can't really take any credit for this. Because I was, this was not only not my idea, I thought they were nuts.

**Ellison Barber** (3:48)
Why have you stayed with it? How has that changed for you?

**Josh Mankiewicz** (3:51)
You know, when I started in journalism, which was 50 years ago, I was first, I was working on the assignment desk in the middle of the night and weekends and that kind of thing. And the first job that I was promoted to, I was at ABC News and I was the off-air reporter covering the US House, which I did for three years back in the late 70s. And I really thought at the time that sort of covering Washington was the be-all and all of journalism and that if I was lucky, you know, I'd be the White House correspondent someday, something like that. But I was a political reporter for a long time. And then I came to Dateline and did these other kinds of stories for a couple of years. And then we started on crime and the criminal justice system. And I saw how that connected with people in a way that Washington coverage didn't.