Beginning investigative reporting skills for projects
Sarah Cohen, October 2014
Empirical journalsim
- Documents reporting
- Reporting with public records
- Enterprise reporting
- Investigative reporting
- Original research
Other data journalism
- Number crunching
- App development
- Reporting on others' research
- Data visualization for publication
A little history
New York World
May 7, 1893
Nellie Bly feigned insanity to get admitted to the asylum on Blackwell's Island and independently documented reports of mistreatment and overcrowding
The Chicago Sun-Times
1977
The newspaper created a tavern to catch inspectors and other officials taking bribes.
The Mirage Bar was, indeed, a mirage.
Hail to the copy machine
The 1963 introduction of the Xerox machine would eventually make undercover work less common and would change the ethics of journalism
Detroit Free Press, 1967
As part of its award winning coverage of the Detroit riots, Philip Meyer conducted a survey of rioters that debunked much of the common wisdom. He went on to write "Precision Journalism," the classic text on empirical journalism.
Philadelphia Inquirer, 1973
In "Crime and Injustice," Don Barlett and Jim Steele, with the help of Philip Meyer, used social science techniques to sample paper court records and showed that black defendants were more likely to be jailed than whites for the same crime
Elliot Jaspin, late 1980s
Traveled the country teaching reporters to use computerized records and founded the Missouri Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting -- later renamed NICAR. In 1990, Bill Dedman won the first Pulitzer Prize for a CAR story, "The Color of Money".
Conceiving the investigation
Conceiving step 2
- What is your "minimum" story?
- What will it take to get further
- How long are you willing to wait?
Start with a risk assessment
The anatomy of a story
Lessons
- Compared to what?
- Find the M.O. of a case you know
- How is a 3-dimensional world represented in a 2 dimensions?
- Expect flaws in the records
- Document your work
- Look at both sides of a coin
- When data doesn't exist, create it.
Make your own data ->
Exclusive story
Triangulation: If .. then.
Content analysis / categorization
