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At the IRE Conference in New Orleans, 2016 Knight Scholar Akira Kyles spoke with attendee Jenise Morgan, senior editor at the Florida Courier.
Kyles: How did you fall in love with journalism?
Morgan: I fell in love with journalism when I was in the 11th grade and I was doing a lot of poetry and I just wanted to do more. I was always great at English and my dad always wanted me to be an English teacher and I didn’t really want to do that.
Once I was participating on the yearbook staff at Naples High School and I decided I wanted to try to do something with this. So I told my English teacher that I wanted to major in journalism and that I wanted to go to Florida A&M and she discouraged me. I told my neighbor, who was a teacher, and she went ballistic. She said, “How dare she tell you what you cannot do?” The next day she had changed her mind, so I guess she had talked to her.
Kyles: Where did you go to college? What was your first journalism job?
Morgan: I went to FAMU. Actually, when I graduated FAMU, I was supposed to go to the Pensacola News Journal and I had been hired as a GA, general assignment reporter, but I got a call from Charles Cherry, who was the NAACP’s state president and he had a small newspaper called the Daytona Times. So I ended up packing all my clothes and putting all my clothes in my little Toyota and went up there, took a job, no interview. I went up there and learned so much about civil rights, learned so much about the black community, which is kind of odd for me because I had been raised in Naples and there’s not that many of us in Naples. That’s why I went to FAMU, because I wanted that culture.
Kyles: Why do you find writing for the black press important?
Morgan: It’s important to tell our stories. It’s important that those stories get out. When it started, that was an opportunity for us to share stories that weren’t being told in the mainstream press. We didn’t have a voice in the mainstream press, we just weren’t visible. So it was important, for the civil rights movement and for everything as we move forward. So the stories that we tell are important because they give people a voice, and we tell stories that the mainstream press doesn’t. I know that particularly because I’m the past president of the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists. We’re always doing stories that the mainstream press doesn’t think about doing. The beauty of working for the black press is that you get to do a variety of stories, you get to be an advocate. We don’t just do fluff, we don’t run weddings and births and engagements.
By Ashley Balcerzak
When writing about abortion or reproductive rights, it can be difficult to move past the debate itself. Many stories lean on a formula of pro-life versus pro-choice activists and ultimately land on a somewhat expected left-leaning takeaway.
At this year’s IRE Conference panel “How to investigate the war on women’s health,” Hannah Levintova and Marianne Szegedy-Maszak with Mother Jones, Nina Martin of ProPublica, and The Guardian’s Molly Redden discussed tips and tricks for going beyond the predictable culture-wars piece.
Focus on a different aspect of women’s health, Redden said, such as the economic factors involved. Think of the story as an investigation into a heavily regulated industry and ask the traditional questions: Who is pushing action on each side? Where did they come from? How truthful are their messages?
Sourcing is crucial. Go to the outspoken actors, but also consult internal documents, lawsuits, and state data. Keep in touch with whoever runs the abortion fund in your state, which Redden said is the most overlooked resource on this beat.
Delve into amicus briefs (legal documents filed by non-litigants), cert petitions (appeals to the Supreme Court), and 990s. Look at who is funding law firms involved in cases on the topic. Follow the citations in medical and law journals, Martin added.
You’ll often run into issues of anonymity. It will sometimes feel impossible to find the name of a victim, or they won’t want to talk once you find them. Go to congressional testimony, Levintova said, and find women in the transcripts who have already decided to speak publicly.
Know your local community really well: Who runs the local hospital? Pay attention to the comings and goings of their CEOs. What are the leaders’ political affiliations?
Martin said not to wait until the end of your reporting to contact the other side. They’ll often have much more for you to investigate, fact check and consider.
Acknowledge any inherent bias in your word choices, Redden said. The words “access to abortion” favor pro-choice readers, so being as neutral as possible will help both sides trust you.
Another way to avoid the perceived bias trap? Go beyond abortion. There are so many stories that impact women’s health that are overlooked because they are not as flashy or as easy as abortion pieces.
Ashley Balcerzak is a fellow at the Center for Public Integrity, where she covers state and local politics from a national level. She is pursuing her master's degree in journalism and public affairs at American University, and received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University. Ashley's work can be found in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, TIME, Men’s Health and The Huffington Post.
By Kaitlin Washburn
Craig Flournoy, a journalism professor at the University of Cincinnati, recognizes the courage it takes for a student to do investigative reporting on the college he or she is attending.
“It is a risk…to criticize the hand that signs your paycheck or that hands you your diploma,” Flournoy said.
Marcelo Rochabrun did just that when he went after the most elite eating clubs at Princeton as editor of the Princetonian. The eating clubs, Princeton’s equivalent to sororities and fraternities, are incredibly influential within the university’s community.
Rochabrun started by studying the 990 forms of the university and the organizations affiliated with it. He came across the Princeton Project Foundation, whose mission statement is to provide money for “educational purposes” and to “better” the Princeton campus.
What Rochabrun discovered is that this foundation only existed to hand out various grants to Princeton’s eating clubs. He found that about $20 million had been given to many of the eating clubs for extensive refurbishments made to their meeting places.
During his talk, Flournoy detailed how his students looked into academic spending and athletic subsidies at the University of Cincinnati. They ultimately found that students’ tuition money was being funneled to athletes via a university subsidy without disclosure on tuition bills.
Using the story as an example, he went through the four-step process he requires his students to take when they embark on an investigation.
The third speaker was Dan Kane, a reporter from The Raleigh News and Observer. He discovered that over an 18-year period, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, had enrolled 3,100 students, mainly athletes, in fake classes.
Kane first began his investigation when he came across the transcript of a UNC freshman football player.
The student had scored below an 850 on the SAT and had a 2.2 GPA in high school. Yet he had received a B+ in an advanced, upper-level biology course that he was allowed to take during a summer session before his freshman year.
Using a variety of sources that weren’t under the administration’s thumb, he was able to find that fake classes has been boosting the GPAs of UNC athletes for 18 years.
Kaitlin Washburn is an investigative journalism student at the University of Missouri. She is currently a news intern for Voice of OC.
At the IRE Conference in New Orleans, 2016 Knight Scholar Jocelyn Stargell-Zachery spoke with attendee Breanna Molloy, a multimedia journalist at KATC in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Stargell-Zachery: What is your background? Did you originally go to journalism school?
Molloy: Well, I originally went to film school and moved to Los Angeles, California and tried to do the whole industry thing. I realized that it was something that I really did not want to do. I kind of got stuck in that techie niche and really did not have creative input in the stories that I was telling. Long story short, I came across the blog of Matt Pearl at 11 Alive News (WXIA-TV in Atlanta) and saw his stories and thought, this is what I want to do.
Stargell-Zachery: What made you choose to be a MMJ instead of an editor or producer?
Molloy: I knew I wanted to be an MMJ because I was passionate about telling stories of others and being able to take my camera into more remote places. I thought that being an MMJ was perfect because you don’t have that intimidating photog and crew that usually people shy away from. It was truly an epiphany when I found out that people do not aspire to be MMJs, that they’d rather have the cameraman and crew.
Stargell-Zachery: At what point did you know that journalism was your career path?
Molloy: After following Pearl’s stories. I planned on going back to grad school to gain a better understanding of the field of journalism. But after creating my reel and sending it to a few anchors, news directors and recruiters, I got a hit and landed my first TV job here in Lafayette. I found that being a journalist was doing little mini documentaries every day. I did not know that reporters also could shoot and edit. It added that creative aspect for me. I had done videography and editing also, so I thought this was my dream job.
Stargell-Zachery: What are you currently working on?
Molloy: I am of course working on stories here in Lafayette, Louisiana, but I just found out that I will get the chance to go to Cuba and work as an MMJ there. I am very excited for this project because it is something that I have been working really hard on.
Q: How important is it to have investigative skills in this field and do you have any tips for aspiring MMJs?
Molloy: You will use the skills learned at this conference in everyday reporting, not just while working on investigative stories. So the skills here are essential ones that aspiring MMJs need. I would say the two most important things are to not let fear stop you from trying. Of course you are going to get doors shut on you and you are going to fail, but the most important thing is to not let it defeat you. Also, do not be afraid to move in your stand-ups. Show action and show that you are comfortable on camera.
At the 2016 IRE Conference in New Orleans, Knight Scholar Ashley Jackson talked with Ian Auzenne, an executive producer at KATC in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Jackson: Tell me about your journey and how you got into the position that you are in today?
Auzenne: It starts back to 1998, when I was 10 years old. I got involved in public access TV in Lafayette and I kept up with it until I went to college. Princeton doesn't have a student TV station, but it has a radio station, WPRB. I started there as a sports broadcaster and quickly moved into DJing and doing news. That transition was easy because I'm a natural talker and I've always been at ease in front of a mic.
After moving back to Louisiana, I used a few connections to get a job at KLFY. I wanted to report, but was hired as a producer. Two years later, I jumped over to KATC as an assignments editor. I later switched back to producing and recently got promoted to EP. I got my current gig because (KATC News Director) Letitia (Walker) saw something in me as a writer and producer that she gave me a shot to do the EP gig.
Jackson: In college did you intern anywhere?
Auzenne: I did not. Big mistake on my part. I could have had a foot in the door somewhere and a leg up in getting a job. I'd advise all college journalism students to get an internship if they can.
Jackson: What inspires you to keep going?
Auzenne: The need to pay rent! I love what I do. That makes it easy to go to work everyday. It's also a great way to learn about the world and the people around you. Being in broadcasting has given me a whole new insight into the minds of the viewers/listeners
Jackson: What is the hardest thing you have run into in the media world?
Auzenne: Two things come to mind.
1. I had to learn how to delegate and trust others to do their jobs. I still have issues with this because I know if I want it done quickly and accurately, I can do it myself. I know I have to teach people how to accomplish various tasks, but old habits die hard.
2. Time management. If you over-exert yourself and commit to too many projects, you'll burn out quickly. I've done it too many times to count. I'm finally cutting back on my freelance work and focusing primarily on my EP role.
Jackson: What would be your advice to young aspiring journalist and reporters?
Auzenne: Pound the pavement. Keep looking for work. You won't find a job immediately, but it will come. When you do find a job, stay optimistic and avoid becoming bitter. You will become cynical, but you have to be cynical to be a good investigator and reporter. But you don't have to let the job make you bitter.
Jackson: What tips could you give students on how to land a dream job?
Auzenne: If you want your dream job, you have to actively pursue it. It won't be given to you. Nothing in this business is. If you want it, you have to work and fight for it.
.@SheilaCoronel @columbiajourn greeting her inspired students @IRE_NICAR #IRE16 #IRE2016 pic.twitter.com/1Ed4VWlJzf
— Francisco Vara-Orta (@fvaraorta) June 18, 2016
By Sarah Gamard
The word “family” comes up often at IRE conferences. Sheila Coronel began her keynote speech in New Orleans by saying she felt she was in a room with 1,800 cousins from all over the world — a global front of like-minded muckrakers.
The award-winning pioneer, who has long uncovered corruption in the Philippines and now teaches at the Columbia Journalism School, spoke to a ballroom full of reporters, editors and news affiliates on Saturday.
“Look at where we are now,” Coronel said, noting the “explosion” of investigative reporting around the world.
Ten years ago, during her first lecture at Columbia, she told her students they were at the dawn of a new muckraking age. She pointed to two of this year’s biggest investigations as perfect examples of the type of impact today’s reporters have marshalled. Tax-evading billionaires are “quaking in their private jets” since the release of the Panama Papers. The Associated Press’ “Seafood from Slaves” investigation freed hundreds of slaves in Thailand, while holding the entire supply chain responsible, right up to Walmart.
Coronel attributed the new wave of blockbuster investigations to collaborations across newsrooms and countries. “The era of the lone wolf is over,” she said.
The longtime journalist is a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). She said future muckrakers won’t be so tightly tethered to their home country because cross-border reporting barriers are no longer insurmountable.
But there are still challenges: Coronel said revenues are falling, threatening the stability of the free press. There's no holy grail to secure funding now and in the future, she said, but journalism’s new global network provides a model for international support.
Membership between journalism networks today is informal and members are bound by reciprocity and trust. Cross-border journalism networks like GIJN function similarly to the nefarious enterprises they investigate — like jihadist networks — because it takes one broad coalition to challenge another.
Investigative reporting, Colonel said, is still about “exposing the bastards," but it's also about opening up spaces and providing facts that inspire intelligent debate and invoke reader empathy.
She exalted the investigative journalists who have put their own welfare on the line for their work and continue to report in the face of danger and death threats, including Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism’s research director Hamoud Almahmoud, El Faro’s Oscar Martinez and Mada Masr’s Lina Attalah.
Coronel is optimistic that, if reporters shine a light on the wrongdoing, the world can become a more informed place, a better place.
Sarah Gamard is a New Orleans native, LSU undergraduate and summer staff writer at The Lens. She loves writing and telling a good story.
By Moriah Balingit
Covering schools can be grueling and it can be easy to get caught up in the mundane. At an IRE Conference panel, Dallas Morning-News reporter Tawnell Hobbs, Tampa Bay Times reporter Michael LaForgia and University of Missouri graduate fellow Francisco Vara-Orta offered their advice on how to dig deep on the schools beat and tell stories that go beyond board meetings and test scores.
1. Go beyond test scores.
Local, state and federal agencies track tons of data points – poverty rates, what advanced classes are offered, who is taking them, how many students are arrested, how many special education students are referred to law enforcement. Learn to navigate the data made available by your state and by the federal government, and learn when this data is released. One of the most comprehensive data sets is the Civil Rights Data Collection from the Department of Education.
Other things to request regularly:
2. Follow the money.
Remember that schools are taxpayer-funded entities that demand the same kind of scrutiny given to other government institutions. Parents and students are not the only stakeholders. Taxpayers, too, have an interest in ensuring their dollars are spent prudently.
When the Dallas Independent School District began cutting teachers and raising class sizes, Dallas Morning News reporter Tawnell Hobbs decided to dig into the district’s spending. What she found was a lot of fat – of both the figurative (as in lavish spending on employee retreats) and the literal variety (as in the district had spent $86,000 on Chick-fil-A for employees). Hobbs found at least $57 million in fat.
“Money drives what’s going on in the classroom. Money drives the quality of the teachers … the buildings where the kids sit,” Hobbs said.
3. When schools are failing and kids are falling short, don’t let grown-up policy-makers off the hook.
When reporters at the Tampa Bay Times set out to explore why poor, black children in Pinellas County were doing so much worse than their peers, they decided to ignore the assumptions that have become convenient ways to excuse achievement gaps.
“There were all these notions out there that people use to explain away what was going on with these kids,” said reporter Michael LaForgia. “It’s a lack of parental involvement. It’s poverty … we set out to explode those myths.”
But the gaps, as it turns out, seem to widen as schools resegregated and as the largely poor, black schools lost resources.
“This was the consequence of a series of decisions that were made by people,” LaForgia said.
The resulting story, “Failure Factories,” garnered the Tampa Bay Times a Pulitzer Prize, and spurred changes in the district.
4. Make sure students have a voice in your story -- but be cautious.
While reporting on Failure Factories, LaForgia tracked down children outside the school – at sporting events and tutoring centers – and through public records, like police reports documenting visits to the school. Tawnell Hobbs used student directory information to track down students at a school where she unearthed a scheme to cut out social studies and science in an effort to boost test scores in reading and math. Francisco Vara-Orta, who has covered education extensively, used Twitter to track down teachers and students.
But make sure you check with parents to ensure they understand what it means for their child’s name to be published and associated with a particular story.
5. Get inspired by the greats.
Schools reporting – with its late-night board meetings, angry parents and impossible-to-decode jargon – can be grueling and it can sometimes be difficult to get beyond superficial narratives. So keep track of what other great education writers are doing, advises Vara-Orta. In the last year, stories about schools have garnered top prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Polk Award. Here’s a small sample, from our panelists and from other journalists:
Dallas Morning-News: Dallas ISD spent millions on extras, analysis of check register shows
Tampa Bay Times: FAILURE FACTORIES
This American Life: The Problem We All Live With
L.A. Times: Smart talk from the 'sex ed girl'
Want more? Check out the finalists for the Education Writers Association awards.
Moriah Balingit covers education for The Washington Post. She graduated from American University in 2015 with a master's degree in journalism and public affairs with an emphasis on investigative reporting. She previously was the city hall reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
By Sarah Gamard
T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong broke down their Pulitzer Prize-winning collaboration “An Unbelievable Story of Rape” to a packed conference hall at IRE 2016 in New Orleans.
Last year, Miller was working on a series about rape for ProPublica when he got a tip that police had caught a serial rapist in Colorado. Soon after he began investigating, Miller got word a reporter for The Marshall Project was working the same story. The nonprofit outfits had a reputation for collaborating but never before with each other.
Like the story’s two lead detectives, Miller and Armstrong — who first met at an IRE conference — decided to work together. Armstrong focused on the victim in Washington state while Miller began with the police. Miller said the collaboration “was made in heaven.”
Investigations are incredibly complex, Miller said, so the 12,000-word story required distilling the narrative and compressing the details into only the most crucial. He stressed the importance of “interrogating” public records and gathering more than just one big, fat police file. Ask for the prosecutor’s file, too, as well as emails and anything else potentially related to the investigation. No single agency will have a truly comprehensive record of events — the more information you can get, the more factual the end result will be.
While some last-minute interviews were squeezed in at the 11th hour, the quotes were carefully inserted so as not to disturb the narrative, Armstrong said.
It took seven months to gain the trust of Marie, a rape victim and the story’s main character. Armstrong said he didn’t ask a single question until she had the opportunity to ask him everything she wanted. His first interview with her lasted an entire day.
Armstrong said that Marie and other sources in the piece wanted to talk because they hoped their stories would help others avoid suffering the same way or repeating the same mistakes. Many trauma victims need time — sometimes months, sometimes years — before they’re ready to go on the record. Be patient. Narratives don’t lose power with the passage of time, he said.
Miller and Armstrong said they trusted each other as well as their respective editors, ProPublica’s Joe Sexton and The Marshall Project’s Bill Keller. Armstrong advised reporters against being overly guarded in the editing process. Listen to editors when you need to “get off the stage,” he said.
The story was constructed to create suspense, preserve the reveal and keep the readers engaged by planting a question in their minds early on, Armstrong said.
In narrative journalism, a nut graf can kill the story, he said. Likewise, the reporters warned against using too much AP style if it’ll disrupt the flow of the narrative.
A strong believer in the “show-don’t-tell” truism, Miller said used carefully chosen details and short, simple sentences. He let the characters tell the story without bogging down the narrative in attribution. Details drive the story, and Miller said a good way for you to parse out the important ones is to pay attention to how you react when you’re interviewing a source. Listen to your goosebumps.
Dialogue and conversation can be particularly powerful, which you can be built from details in police records and the sources’ own accounts. The reporters supported Marie’s account — and that of her rapist — by adding a well-placed audio clip at the end, maybe “the most emotional gut punch in the entire piece,” Armstrong said.
Miller and Armstrong said Marie is satisfied by the impact of the story since its publication. The story is even used as a training tool at trauma centers and within law enforcement circles. Armstrong said it has been a healing experience for her, and she has no regrets.
When reporting such emotional stories, an investigative reporter often goes into “some of the darkest corners of the world and people’s hearts,” Miller said, which can lead to post-traumatic stress. He recommended the Dart Center as a resource.
The reporters agreed that ProPublica would have never reached out to The Marshall Project had they not had that relationship that began at an IRE conference. They said IRE builds great relationships — the ones that matter for strong reporting and strong stories. They said trust and constant communication are crucial in a joint story.
“I talked to Ken more than I talked to my wife,” Miller said.
Sarah Gamard is a New Orleans native, LSU undergraduate and summer staff writer at The Lens. She loves writing and telling a good story.
By Taeler De Haes
It’s important to understand where the information you're getting comes from. At the recent IRE Conference in New Orleans, Ira Rosen of 60 Minutes, Tony Kovaleski of KMGH in Denver and Matthew Mosk of ABC shared tips on how to spot frauds – including unreliable sources, misleading or false documents and flat-out liars.
Vet your sources. Ask a few opening questions to yourself. Is the story too good to be true? Did they offer the story to someone else in your market? Find the motivation behind contacting you.
Conduct a “deep dive” background check. Make sure you research and investigate your source.
Make sure the source is in sync with you. Let your source know right away how their interview will be used in the context of the story.
Test your sources. Set up a face-to-face meeting with them. Often, reading their body language will tell you if they are a fraud.
Play poker. Ask questions you know the answer to.
Assign homework to your sources. Give them a list of what you need from them to move further. If they follow through, chances are they are legitimate.
Stay in touch with sources after the story runs to maintain a relationship. Keeping in touch for birthdays, anniversaries and just a friendly “hello” can help make the source feels she is not being used only for information.
Quadruple check documents. Fake documents exist. Make sure the person giving you the documents had custody of them and understand the exact origin of the information.
Include your colleagues in the vetting process. Double-check with colleagues and include them in meetings you may have with sources to get a second opinion.
Taeler De Haes graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in May. She received her MA in investigative journalism and her BJ in broadcast journalism
By Andrew Kreighbaum
Working on a beat where most sources prefer to remain anonymous, VICE News reporter Jason Leopold has turned to extensive and aggressive FOIA work to get officials on the record.
Leopold, who covers national security, said he has 1,500 FOIA requests out at any one time.
“I then seek out the people who are in those documents and they feel far more comfortable discussing those issues,” he said.
To get those documents, Leopold has gone “to war” with the government, suing for various records. It’s a tedious process, but the payoff has been huge, he said. He urged reporters to make use of FOIA lawsuits to get documents and pushed back on the notion that they are prohibitively expensive.
“What you’re talking about is just going to the top of the pile,” he said. “It’s a few thousand dollars. I think it’s a worthy investment.”
Among the other FOIA tips Leopold offered reporters:
Appeal everything, even if you get records in response to a request. Agencies will sometimes find additional documents.
Look out for responses that cite exemptions such as 7(A) for ongoing investigations. Leopold said that language can indicate agencies aren’t even searching to determine if they have releasable documents.
Within requests for email, ask FOIA officers to also check trash bins.
Read and understand the Freedom of Information Act and study the language in successful requests and lawsuits to understand what phrasing works best.
Request processing notes for your FOIA request – basically, the metadata for your request – to find out how it is being handled by an agency. That’s how Leopold found out the FBI referred to him as a “FOIA terrorist.”
Keep track of FOIA requests in Excel and calendar programs to stay on top of when responses are due.
Brandon Smith, an independent journalist who sued the city of Chicago for release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, said it’s critical for journalists to remain persistent even when initially denied records. Fourteen other requests were filed by news organizations for the video, he said. All were denied.
“When they were told no, they went away,” he said.
Smith said his success obtaining the video showed that reporters can pursue lawsuits for release of records without big organizations behind them.
Andrew Kreighbaum is currently a graduate researcher at the Investigative Reporting Workshop and recently finished a master's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri. He has previously reported on education and local government for newspapers in Texas including The El Paso Times, The Monitor and the Laredo Morning Times.
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