Topic: Investigative Reporting

Determining the Reliability of a Key CIA Source
After his newspaper story exposed the CIA’s reliance on a con man to determine if Iraq had WMD, a journalist dug deeper to unravel the mystery.
By Bob Drogin

Digital Records Reveal Corruption on Capitol Hill
By Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer

Following the Brain Injury Story: From Iraq to the Home Front
After hearing from Marines in Iraq about head wounds, a USA Today reporter works to get the military to release information about their prevalence.
By Gregg Zoroya

Going Online With Watchdog Journalism
‘… investigative reporting itself is also on the cusp of major transformation ….’
By Paul E. Steiger

Good Journalism Can Be Good Business
‘Let’s not pull the plug on for-profit journalism just yet.’
By Daniel Brogan

Instilling a Watchdog Culture in the Newsroom
‘Watchdog work is not just about projects; it’s about an approach to beat coverage that should be reflected in daily and longer-form work.’
By Lorie Hearn

Redefining a Newspaper’s Watchdog Approach
At The Oregonian, a new training program for reporters focuses on investigative skills needed by specific reporters for their daily beats.
By Les Zaitz and Brent Walth

Decision-Making: A Visual Journey Inside the Iraq War
‘… it remains the job of journalists to do more than report the “stuff” that happens or bring to the public the “first rough draft of history.”’
By Michael Kirk and Michael Wiser

Sharing All That Reporters Knew With Readers
By Steven A. Smith

Building a Toolbox for Precision Journalism
By Stephen K. Doig

Investigative Talent Departs After Awards Come In
The Blade’s commitment to investigative reporting endures despite the loss of key reporters to larger news organizations with better pay.
By Dave Murray

Investing in Watchdog Reporting
‘… the Journal Sentinel has built a 10-person Watchdog Team with a robust Web presence called Watchdog Online.’
By Mark Katches

Making Firm a Newspaper’s Focus on Investigative Reporting
‘In an age when our critics love to crow that news is an undifferentiated commodity available anywhere, investigative reporting clearly isn’t.’
By David Boardman

Investigative Reporting: Keeping It Relevant, Keeping It Local
‘Our story selection is attuned to answering the question a reader might ask: How does this affect me?’
By Paul D’Ambrosio

Introduction
By Melissa Ludtke, Editor

Investigating What Went Wrong and Why
‘As it turns out, many of the systemic failures that plagued the Gulf Coast during and after Katrina should have been predicted ….’
By Jenni Bergal

Enterprising Journalism in a Multimedia World
With video, audio and interactive data, The Associated Press makes its investigative reporting accessible, useful to other news outlets, and compelling to its consumers.
By John Solomon

Public Investigator: Transforming Tips Into Stories
Two reporters use quick-hit, watchdog journalism to investigate local issues—and blog about what they do.
By Raquel Rutledge and Ellen Gabler

The Neutrality Maze
When there's one side to the story, what does it mean to stay impartial?
By Joshua Kors

Tribunals and War Crimes Trials: Treatment of the Press
Investigative journalists confront intimidating tactics and legal actions against them by international criminal tribunals.
By Thierry Cruvellier

Military Barriers Impede a Newspaper's Investigation
When the Los Angeles Times set out to tell how two Afghans held in U.S. military custody died, its efforts to report the story met resistance at every twist and turn.
By Craig Pyes

From Idea, to Beat Reporting, to Investigative Project
At the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the I-team created a new strategy to make certain that watchdog journalism is featured in the newspaper.
By Lois Norder

Team Reporting on a Watchdog Project
Tensions surfaced as an investigative team produced a six-part series amid pressures of a downsized newsroom.
By Darren Barbee

Remembering the Value of Investigative Journalism
A newspaper editor describes six newsroom strategies that ensure that watchdog reporting thrives—even at news organizations where resources are limited.
By Rex Smith

Needed: A Leader to Champion the Cause
In restructuring The Post and Courier’s newsroom, the top editor strengthened the focus on investigative journalism in the newspaper and on the Web.
By Doug Pardue

Joining Forces to Produce Public Service Journalism
‘By using a model like this one, we can more effectively use our staff to do investigative journalism that holds government institutions accountable.’
By David Ledford

Reporting a Scandal When No One Bothers to Listen
‘It was as though until headlines blared from newsstands in the nation's capital, the trees in this forest weren't really falling.’
By Mark Benjamin

Investigative Reporting on Iraq: From Beginning to End
McClatchy's Washington bureau continues its watchdog reporting about Iraq, this time revealing dangers in the new embassy construction.
By Warren P. Strobel

Personal Tragedies Illuminate the Consequences of War
In investigating why some Iraq War veterans become homicidal, The New York Times highlighted a circumstance that no one else was tracking.
By Matthew Purdy

Private Military Contractors: Determining Accountability
‘The reliance on private contractors and a web of subcontractors can come with a staggering price.’
By Joseph Neff

Investigative Reporting About Secrecy
‘With some noteworthy exceptions, secrecy is rarely tackled head-on in the press.’
By Ted Gup

Publisher, Editor and Reporter: The Investigative Formula
Looking back to the early 1900’s—to Ida Tarbell and S.S. McClure—offers valuable lessons for watchdog journalism in the 21st century.
By Steve Weinberg

Fund for Investigative Journalism: Practices and Policies
By John Hyde

Creating an Investigative Narrative
By Anne Hull and Dana Priest

Changing Equations in Investigative Reporting
An editor proposes that journalists seek new partners in their mission of monitoring those in power.
By John Robinson

Digital Journalism: Will It Work for Investigative Journalism?
The Nieman Watchdog Project’s editor explores what might be missing and what might be found as journalists turn to the Web to assist in reporting.
By Barry Sussman

A Vital Responsibility in Need of Support
‘… our industry, as a whole, cannot afford to abandon or cut back on investigative reporting, particularly on local and regional issues.’
By Rick Rodriguez

Intimidation and Convictions of Journalists
Journalist Robert Shelton told a 1950’s Senate subcommittee it was ‘engendering the fear that soon it will be looking into newsrooms all over the country.’
By Morton Mintz

Investigative Reporting Stays Local
‘The local stories are the toughest. They matter more to readers ….’
By Ken Armstrong

Beacons of Hope: Investigative Journalism Centers
Training and support for investigative journalists are increasing, and collaborative projects are happening worldwide.
By Brant Houston

Global Efforts at Investigative Reporting
A Brazilian journalist explores the benefits of collaboration and describes how and why watchdog reporting has changed in Latin America.
By Fernando Rodrigues

New Sources of Funding, New Sources of Reporting
As nonprofit investigative models take shape, a journalist surveys emerging possibilities.
By Gilbert Cranberg

Two Years Later, Justice Denied
In reporting a story about public officials' misuse of government funds, police injure an investigative journalist in a ‘particularly violent encounter.’
By Andrea McCarren

Investigative Reporting: Strategies for Its Survival
New funding mechanisms and newsroom changes are needed if watchdog journalism is to thrive in small and midmarket news organizations.
By Edward Wasserman

The Benefits of Computer-Assisted Reporting
‘… in this day of easily accessible data, computer expertise can be a great equalizer.’
By Jason Method

Nurturing Newsroom Talent With Local Investigations
‘For projects, the newspaper now typically links a lead investigative reporter with beat reporters.’
By Michael Sallah

Defining an Online Mission: Local Investigative Reporting
At the nonprofit voiceofsandiego.org, ‘From our first day our job has been to fill the gaps between what people want from their local media and what they have.’
By Andrew Donohue and Scott Lewis

Finding Support for a Lengthy Mission
To do this investigative story, ‘we needed the total investment of our editors, our newspaper’s publisher and, in turn, Hearst Corporation executives.’
By Brendan Lyons

Changing Circumstances Delay An Investigation—and Lead to a New Approach
With The Blade’s I-team no longer functioning, the paper’s only investigative reporter now partners with beat reporters to do watchdog stories.
By Steve Eder

Combining Investigative Reporting With an Editorial Voice
‘… it became clear that the editorial board could advocate for changes by presenting the facts in a fresh, in-depth way and by speaking with scientific-based authority.’
By Heidi Evans and Beverly Weintraub

Probing the High Suicide Rate Among Soldiers in Iraq
In pushing for the military to release undisclosed data, reporters found soldiers who battled mental illness and took their own lives during the war.
By Matthew Kauffman and Lisa Chedekel

Terrorism and Prisoners: Stories That Should Be Told
‘… stories about how we might balance security and civil liberties began slipping deeper inside major newspapers.’
By Tim Golden

Employing Different Strategies With Two Projects
‘… investigative reporting can be just as effective at revealing why something did happen as it can be in documenting how something could happen.’
By Ron Menchaca

Connecting Congressional Earmarks With Campaign Contributions
An investigative reporter creates a database of earmarks revealing the relationship between wasteful spending and political favors.
By David Heath

Partnership and Perseverance Result in a Story Rarely Told
Though news coverage of illegal immigration often lacks the essential voices and images of migrant workers, journalists at The Sacramento Bee included both.
By Tom Knudson

Investigating the Nation's Exploding Credit Squeeze
'Questions of by whom and for whom need more and better investigation, as well as a look at who are the losers and who are the winners.'
By Danny Schechter

The New Front Page: The Digital Revolution
A former newspaper editor figures out how to fund serious digital journalism with an annual budget less than what newsrooms sometimes spent on one investigative project.
By Joel Kramer

Changing the Drumbeat of Typical Health Reporting
At HealthNewsReview.org ‘… we are on the lookout for those stories that include unsubstantiated claims made in the course of reporting about health.’
By Gary Schwitzer

Digging Through Data and Discovering a Profitable Handshake
The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team set out to determine why the state’s health care costs are so high and ended up revealing a hidden deal between powerful forces.
By Marcella Bombardieri and Scott Allen

A Small Newspaper Tackles a Big Investigative Project
The persistence of two reporters pays off in revealing how local government failed residents who worried about connections between corporate behavior and the high incidence of brain cancer.
By Kevin P. Craver

Investigating the Pharmaceutical Industry on a Blog
‘… evidence itself often emerged as the centerpiece, which has a strong impact on the audience when they see for themselves the incriminating paper trail.’
By Ed Silverman

The Web: Fertile Ground for Investigative Projects
‘Digital journalism could not be the sole domain of breaking news and blogging, and it had to be more than the repository of electronic reprints.’
By Maud Beelman

A Water Trail of Antibiotics in India
By

Crowdfunded Reporting: Readers Pay for Stories to Be Told
‘Reporting for Spot.Us, where money directly changes hands, is the same as reporting any story for Wired.com. For Spot.Us, the ethical promise inheres in the transparency of the funding.’
By Alexis Madrigal

When Fierce Competitors Join the Same Team
North Carolina’s leading newspapers now publish each other’s investigative work ‘as prominently as we would have had we reported them ourselves.’
By Gary Schwab

Using Multimedia to Tell an Investigative Story About Innocence
‘Two departments within our newspaper—editorial and new media—had to work closely together to construct the project.’
By Christine Young

Toppling the ‘Big Three’—Medical Care, Behavior and Genes
‘Unnatural Causes’ mixes reporting of research rarely featured in traditional news coverage with visual storytelling in the hope of sparking a health equity movement.
By Madeline Drexler

An Investigative Reporting Partnership: A Serendipitous Collaboration
‘At Northeastern University in Boston, where I joined the faculty in 2007, students in my investigative reporting seminars have produced 11 Page One stories for The Boston Globe in just 20 months.’
By Walter V. Robinson

The Difficult Path of a Tribal Watchdog Reporter
‘I asked the council politely, “What is the role of this board? Will you be looking over and deciding what news goes to print?”
By Bonnie Red Elk

Mining the Coal Beat: Keeping Watch Over an ‘Outlaw’ Industry
Digging through records, creating new databases, and asking key questions leads a West Virginia reporter to important investigative stories about the coal industry.
By Ken Ward, Jr.

Pouring Meaning Into Numbers
In using EPA data, USA Today’s watchdog project empowered ‘parents to learn about the types and sources of chemicals that might be in the air near their child’s school.’
By Blake Morrison and Brad Heath

Video News Reporting: New Lessons in New Media
‘What would it take to create good video journalism for online audiences, inexpensively and in an idiom that looked neither too homemade nor too much like TV?’
By Nick Penniman

Using Social Media to Reach Young Readers
In reporting on a case of a police informant who’d been murdered, the Tallahassee Democrat relied on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and text messages to get its reporting to young readers.
By Julia Luscher Thompson

The Book as an Investigative Vehicle for News
A journalist explores why news organizations too often fail ‘to treat the investigative discoveries of the book authors as headline grabbers.’
By Steve Weinberg

The War in Iraq and 9/11: Interviews with Journalist Authors
By

The War in Iraq and 9/11: Recent Investigative Books
By

Watchdog Analysis: Offering Context and Perspective Online
At the Beacon in St. Louis, reporters attempt to ‘provide context to illuminate why something is happening, explain what’s at stake, and assess what might—or what should—happen next.’
By Margaret Wolf Freivogel

Meeting Resistance on Iraq
On-the-ground reporting with resistance fighters in Baghdad revealed a different narrative than the one portrayed by many in the mainstream news.
By Molly Bingham and Steve Connors

The Visual Challenge of Documenting Secrecy
In filming ‘Secrecy,’ the challenge wasn’t access, but finding the best ways to make what is usually hidden from view visible, personal and approachable.
By Peter Galison and Robb Moss

Going to Where the Fish Are Disappearing
Investigative reporters in Sweden set out to tell the story of why and how illegal fishing of cod was happening—and what it meant to consumers and businesses in their country.
By Sven Bergman, Joachim Dyfvermark, and Fredrik Laurin

Introduction
By Melissa Ludtke, Editor

Investigating Health and Safety Issues—As Scientists Would
The Chicago Tribune paid to have state-of-the-art testing done on products people eat and use and the results provided ‘clear reporting entry points into what are complex topics.’
By Sam Roe

Navigating Through the Biofuels Jungle
‘Given my years of energy reporting in California, I could spot several warning signs early on; others took additional reporting to uncover.’
By Elizabeth McCarthy

Reporting Time and Resources Reveal a Hidden Source of Pollution
‘In many cases I had the budget to take chances and to not take no for an answer.’
By Abrahm Lustgarten

Rotting Meat, Security Documents, and Corporal Punishment
A local Chicago investigative reporter uses shoe-leather techniques and digital tools to uncover health and safety violations and be sure the news is widely spread.
By Dave Savini

Watchdogging Public Corruption: A Newspaper Unearths Patterns of Costly Abuse
‘These are tumultuous and frightening times for newspapers, but this kind of reporting is what we do best.’
By Sandra Peddie

Filling a Local Void: J-School Students Tackle Watchdog Reporting
‘Those of us who have been investigative reporters have a responsibility to ensure that local watchdogging remains robust in our industry.’
By Maggie Mulvihill and Joe Bergantino

An Online Database Reveals Health Hazards
Using the Environmental Protection Agency’s data, The Center for Public Integrity finds reason to be concerned about some pesticides found in familiar products.
By Michael B. Pell

Adapting Investigative Reporting Skills to Policy Advocacy
‘My motto remains what it was when I reported on immigration: always hard-headed, never hard-hearted.’
By Jerry Kammer

Examining Water Supplies in Search of Pharmaceutical Drugs
‘Secrecy, it turned out, was our biggest enemy, but not for the reasons investigative reporters typically encounter ….’
By Richard T. Pienciak