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It was reported yesterday that Homicide Watch D.C., the website that reports every facet of every murder case in the District, will likely go on hiatus next week when its publishers, Laura and Chris Amico, go to Cambridge, Mass. for a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University.

That news came as a blow to the Amicos’ fellow journalists, as well as those who rely on Homicide Watch’s deep, compassionate coverage of victims, suspects, investigations and cases. But they said the were planning to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund a group of reporting interns who can continue their work for the next year while they supervise from afar.

Yesterday evening, Homicide Watch’s campaign came online, and is already raking in the donations. They’re looking for $40,000 to fund as many as five paid interns over the course of the next year. In less than 24 hours, Homicide Watch has already raised $5,400 as of this writing.

And like other Kickstarter beneficiaries, the Amicos are offering perks at various levels of funding. A donation of $10 gets one’s name mentioned on the website, $20 brings a 2012 year-in-review ebook, and for $5,000 the Homicide Watch team will teach a seminar. (There are other donor benefits in between those numbers.)

In the accompanying video, Laura and Chris Amico describe the consternation they felt when they moved to D.C. a few years ago and found that homicides were not covered by local news organizations as intently as in places they previously lived. (Laura Amico is a former staff reporter for The Press-Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.)

The video also depicts, Homicide Watch’s reputation not just as a force in journalism, but as a valuable resource for murder victims’ families and friends, who rely on the site to memorialize their loved ones and keep track of the criminal justice process.