Ellison Barber ’12 has long been interested in crime and criminal behavior. At Wofford, she interned with the Spartanburg public defender’s office her senior year and considered pursuing a career with the FBI or attending law school.
She chose to pursue journalism instead, and her current role as correspondent with NBC News has given her a platform from which to dive deep into true crime topics. Her new Netflix video podcast, “Allegedly with Ellison Barber,” which is produced by NBC News Studios, features conversations about contemporary criminal cases. (A paid subscription to Netflix is required to watch “Allegedly.”)
“I love video podcasts,” Barber says. “I think ‘Allegedly’ is in a new space: It’s a combination of the modern video podcast format that leans into an authentic, conversational, cozy setting, and the quintessential journalist-driven juggernauts like NBC’s ‘Dateline.’”
Barber brings a journalist’s focus on facts to subject matter that is sometimes sensationalized by online conspiracies and speculation. She and her team pull information from court documents, primary source material, interviews, public statements, trial video and reporting material. She says they work to verify each piece of information three times before broadcast.
“I don’t think it benefits anyone if only a handful of people know what happens in courtrooms. I want people to have access to information they can trust, and I want people to understand that behind every story there are real people who have had their lives irreparably changed,” she says.
Cases that Barber and her guests have covered in “Allegedly” so far include the killing of Gabby Petito, the Gilgo Beach murders and the Alex Murdaugh trial.
Barber often covered crime stories as a reporter for Channel 9 News in Washington, D.C., listening to police scanners on the way to work. She’s also reported on criminal cases with NBC News, including live reporting on the abduction of four South Carolinians in Mexico in 2023.
Covering major criminal cases on a weekly basis, though, is a new experience for Barber, who says she watches “Dateline NBC” every night and binge-watches true crime documentaries.
“I’m interested in covering crime for the same reasons I’ve spent most of my career covering all sorts of awful things — I care about people. I care about the truth,” she says. “I believe factual information, not rumors or speculation, is one of the best tools we have to try and prevent bad things from happening in the future.”
“Allegedly” is meticulously curated to the tiniest details by Barber and her team. Scattered across the set are true crime Easter eggs, including poisonous plants and historic memorabilia. On the table in front of Ellison each episode is a notebook full of handwritten notes from her intense research process for each case. She says her notetaking habit was formed at Wofford.
“I started obsessing over notes and handwriting all of them when I was studying in Milliken,” she says. “I carry all of that with me, whether I am in the field reporting for NBC News or on the set of ‘Allegedly’ digging into the details of a true-crime story that is capturing national attention.”
Barber recalls watching CourtTV and Snapped, a true crime show focused on female criminals, with classmate Hallie Willm Biediger ’12 while at Wofford. As they were catching up on life earlier this summer, Barber realized they were living out their dreams in exciting ways.
“I was like, ‘Hallie, how wild is this? I used to come over to your dorm to watch Snapped on Sundays — and now you are a lawyer, and I am hosting a true-crime video podcast on Netflix?!’ We had a good laugh about how our younger selves would be losing their minds,” she says.