Mass murders - events in which multiple individuals are killed at one time - can receive extraordinary amounts of coverage in the news, shaping public understanding of crime and demands for policy change. Despite this deluge of coverage, the literature on media coverage of crime has not attended to mass-murder; much of our knowledge on news coverage of crime is based on single-victim homicides. This dissertation engages in a multi-method examination of elite newspaper coverage of US mass-murders from 2004-2018 to begin filling this gap. Utilizing a novel open-source database of 435 mass-murders and a collection of over 9,000 articles from seven nationally circulating newspapers, this dissertation investigates correlates of coverage and the sources journalists use in their reporting on these events. Findings indicate that most mass-murders are subject processes of routinization that result in patterns of coverage similar to single-victim homicide reporting. Only a small number of truly 'exceptional' events are not subject to these patterns - allowing for a greater diversity of story frames and voices to be represented. Implications for the field - including our understanding of crime reporting, methodological advancements, and areas for future research -draw this dissertation into discussion with the larger literature.
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