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By Nicole Vap, KUSA/9News-Denver
Have an investigative trick to share with your friends at IRE? Know someone who should be speaking at the conference but isn’t on a panel? This is the session for you!
For the first time, we're bringing Lightning Talks to the IRE Conference broadcast track.
What are Lightning Talks? Five-minute TED Talk-style forums for you to share whatever you want. They’re the perfect opportunity for investigators to get creative about sharing their favorite tricks of the trade.
This is a favorite panel at the annual CAR Conference. (You can watch some of the talks from the most recent conference online).
I need 10 people to sign up, and then we will release the speakers in June.
Want to get involved? Just email me your idea (nicole.vap@9news.com). Keep your talk to five minutes (and yes, I'm a producer, I will keep you on time).
No idea is too crazy. In fact, the crazier the better!
Get the most bang for your buck at #IRE17 by attending Sunday morning’s expansive lineup. If you leave Phoenix too soon, you’ll miss:
We’re offering several opportunities for broadcast journalists to receive individualized and small-group coaching at the IRE Conference in Phoenix.
Barry Nash and his team return this year to provide personalized coaching sessions. If you have questions about any aspect of your delivery — your appearance, how you use your voice, how you can perform most effectively in the field or in the studio — this is an opportunity you won’t want to miss. Barry has been working with talent at all levels of experience and ability for over 30 years. Jenni Steck works with network and local talent, and specializes in using the body, voice, and breath to project confidence, maturity, and urgency. Learn more about Barry Nash & Company and sign up! (Several of these time slots have been designated as Drop-In Slots. These sessions will not be available for reservation in advance, but will open up for sign-up once the conference is underway.)
We’ll also be offering Broadcast Show & Tell (Sponsored by Napoli Management Group). These popular, interactive sessions allow you to share your investigations with colleagues from around the country. Veteran broadcasters will moderate each session. Each slot runs for 15 minutes. You will be able to reserve a time slot 24 hours in advance. Learn more about how it works, including how to sign up.
Please join us Thursday, April 27 at 5:30 p.m. at Longaberger Alumni House, The Ohio State University, 2200 Olentangy River Road. The Kiplinger Program has invited our IRE Meetup group to a reception for its fellows - and are providing free drinks and appetizers!
RSVP online for the event and join the IRE Ohio Meetup group if you haven’t already.
IRE has member-organized Meetup groups in six cities. Learn more about them on our IRE Meetups page.
Editor's Note:
This article first ran on April 11, 2017 on the Columbia Journalism Review's website.
By Anya Schiffrin
At a time when U.S. journalism is being hit by the collapse of advertising revenue, ongoing uncertainty about business models, and a continual assault from the alt-right and the White House, a new book explains why investigative reporting is essential for policy making and social well-being.
Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism (Harvard University Press, 2016) by economist James T. Hamilton is probably the most detailed, comprehensive study ever published of how US investigative reporting has evolved since Watergate. Hamilton, director of the journalism program at Stanford University, provides a taxonomy of subjects covered by different types of outlets and estimates the cost-benefit to society of the reporting.
Hamilton’s economic perspective is particularly relevant at a time of resource constraint. Many of the investigative stories Hamilton examines cost their newspaper $200,000 or $300,000 to report, but the savings to society were far larger. The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
One of the remarkable things about Democracy’s Detectives is you looked at data mined from 12,000 entries in the journalism prize contests held by the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization from 1979 to 2010. What did you find?
Investigative reporting involves original work, about substantive issues, that someone wants to keep secret. The economics of this type of work are often discouraging. Original work means there is a fixed cost of finding and telling the story. When your reporting changes laws or policies, the benefits spill over onto many people who will never be your readers or viewers, so it is hard for the media outlet to monetize the value generated by these policy changes. By denying access and resisting FOIA requests, the government can raise the transaction costs to finding out what is going on in an agency. These are some of the reasons why, on average, a story submitted to the IRE prize competition takes six months to produce.
Despite these calculations, investigative work does get done. In newspapers, investigative work appears to happen at outlets with higher circulations, which allows a paper to spread the costs of investigation across many readers. If you are offering important stories that others are not, this provides a reason for consumers to seek out your work.
In Democracy’s Detectives you remind us of a key point made in Journalism of Outrage which is that the impact of journalism coverage can unfold over time and in three phases: individualistic, deliberative and then substantive. In other words, the impact on an individual, of a piece of investigative reporting, can be transformed into a broader discussion about how to address the problems revealed by journalists and then finally into a policy change. After analyzing so many pieces of investigative reporting, what kind of impact did your study find from that reporting, and how did that change over time?
Nearly 15 percent of IRE prize contest entries noted their work led to investigations by others. The most likely individual effects were resignations (6%), indictments (4%), and firings (3%). Slightly more than one percent of the IRE stories resulted in the enactment of new laws.
Through case studies, I found that each dollar spent on stories can generate hundreds of dollars in benefits to society, though gains are distributed in ways hard for news organization to translate into additional reporting resources. In one example, I studied the December 2008 News and Observer series “Losing Track: North Carolina’s Crippled Probation System.” The paper found that between 2000 and 2008, 580 people on probation in North Carolina were convicted of killing someone. The three-day, 10-article series took six months of reporting, and cost $216,500 to produce. The reporting generated benefits across the state, but only 6 percent of state households paid for print version of the newspaper. The series changed personnel, law, policies, and expenditures. I estimate that for each dollar in investigative costs, $287 emerged in net policy benefits in the first year of full implementation of probation reforms. There is no process, though, that links brand reward for the paper to the magnitude of these net policy benefits. If the News and Observer had captured just 10 percent of net policy benefits, the paper could have nearly doubled the size of its newsroom.
I also studied the impact of investigative reporting by looking at the work of Pat Stith, who did investigative work in North Carolina for nearly 36 years. During that time, he produced more than 300 investigations. Of those, 149 generated substantive changes, 110 produced deliberative outcomes, and 43 generated individual impacts.
In 10 percent of Stith’s investigations, the result was a new law passed in North Carolina. Across nearly 36 years on investigative beat, he generated 31 new laws. The legislation he generated affected multiple policy areas: public safety, environmental protection, criminal justice, civil rights, and health care. In his last four years of investigative work, he prompted significant legislative change each year.
As you note, there doesn’t seem to me much of a business model for investigative reporting. What did you learn from the past that can help us in the future? How can investigative reporting be supported, especially in the small towns where it’s under threat or no longer exists, according to you.
There are five incentives that lead to the creation of information about public affairs: Pay me (the subscription model); I want to sell your attention (advertising); I want your vote (partisan); I want to change how you think about the world (nonprofit); and I like to talk (expression). Investigative reporting can be generated by different combinations of these incentives, and I think we’ll continue to see a reweighting of these incentives as a source for investigative work.
I’m optimistic about the future of investigative reporting in part because of the evolution of computational journalism. New combinations of data and algorithms can lower the costs of discovering stories. Telling stories in more personalized and engaging ways holds the prospect of the type of product differentiation which can raise the probability that you could charge for news.
It is true that outlets in smaller towns are at a disadvantage, since there are fewer people whose resources or attention could support the creation of costly stories about their local community. Smaller outlets, though, can seek help. IRE has provided training subsidies for smaller newsrooms. ProPublica will often partner with small outlets who can tell the local version of a national story. Right now, state and local governments are releasing data online that can be the source of new accountability stories in small communities.
What lessons do you have for the media under Trump? What should journalists do?
It is always cheaper to repeat a story than to find one. Through his tweets and his free-wheeling management style, President Trump will generate many stories that have a relatively low cost to cover and a high appeal to entertainment demands. The challenge for journalists will be to tell the stories of policy implementation on the ground, to describe the lives of voters as policies are changing (rather than waiting four years to check back in during a campaign).
A key tool may be FOIA. I found in an examination of FOIAs at 14 federal agencies, media FOIAs dropped overall by about a quarter and by nearly 50 percent for local newspapers. In an era when career executive branch workers see the very basis for their agencies challenged, responses to FOIAs may offer a way to provide journalists with the type of data that gives rise to more accountability reporting.
In the 2017 First Quarter IRE Journal, Fergus Bell of Dig Deeper Media wrote about lessons from Electionland, one of the largest social newsgathering operations ever performed over the course of one day. More than 600 journalism students and experienced journalists worked together to monitor and verify social content around indicators of voter suppression on Election Day.
IRE members can read Fergus’ column by downloading a PDF of the IRE Journal. Below, Fergus details key steps in the social verification process.
Fergus Bell is a journalist and news consultant. He is an experienced editor and leading expert in digital newsgathering and the verification of user-generated content (UGC). Bell was the Associated Press’ first global social media and UGC editor and is a founding member of the First Draft News Coalition. In 2015 he founded Dig Deeper Media, where he advises broadcasters and publishers on social and digital newsgathering, newsroom innovation and workflows. He is an advisor to several news-focused start-ups.
Starting today, IRE will begin accepting applications for candidates for the IRE Board of Directors. This year six of the board’s 13 seats are up for election.
The initial filing period for candidates is April 17 - May 21. All candidates filing by this time will appear on the initial ballot when voting begins on June 1.
Electronic online voting will be open both before and during the IRE Conference this summer. Those coming to the conference will have a chance to hear from the candidates, and we encourage all those attending the conference to wait to vote until after hearing the candidates speak. Information about each candidate will also be posted online.
As in the past, candidates may join the election after the initial filing period. However, voting will have already begun, which could diminish a late-filing candidate's chances of being elected.
You'll also be voting for two members of IRE's Contest Committee, which judges the IRE Awards. Those interested in judging will apply using the same procedure as IRE Board candidates, and will be selected on the same ballot. Contest Committee candidates' information will also be available on the IRE website, but they will not make speeches at the conference.
Learn more about candidacy and IRE's electronic voting system.
We’re busy planning panels, demos and hands-on classes for the 2017 IRE Conference in Phoenix. We’ve posted a partial list of expected sessions, but here are a few highlights:
Want more conference news? Follow #IRE17 on Twitter and bookmark our IRE Conference Blog.
Several members of Investigative Reporters and Editors were among the journalists recognized in the 2017 Pulitzer Prizes:
Several members were also recognized as finalists:
Lois Norder, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Documents concerning doctors in every state accused of sexual misconduct are now being made available to journalists and other researchers by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The newspaper has created a data portal to share the information, which it gathered in its recent investigation "Doctors & Sex Abuse." That includes public medical disciplinary orders from every state, as well as court records and other documents.
Most of the documents were obtained by scraping medical board websites, and the AJC notes that some websites didn’t include every document on a physician and that scraping may not have obtained every order posted. Those are important caveats to keep in mind.
But the catalog of cases could allow journalists to examine their state’s handling of sexual misconduct cases and identify doctors allowed to continue practice after findings that they abused patients. Documents can be searched by state, by doctor name, or by certain words in the text.
The portal is at http://ajc-data-share.herokuapp.com/
Journalists must agree to ground rules before being granted access. The AJC is requesting that those who use the information for stories also link from their coverage to the doctors.ajc.com website.
More information about individual states and their handling of abuse cases can be found at doctors.ajc.com/states/
That site includes each state’s rating on patient protection laws and other state highlights.
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