investigative business journalism - finding and pitching ideas by alec klein
Post on 05-Dec-2014
635 Views
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
Presented by Alec Klein Professor, Medill School of Journalism Northwestern University Madison, Wis., Sept. 28, 2013
About Me
Northwestern University Professor Alec Klein is an award-‐winning investigative business journalist and best-‐selling author, formerly of The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
¡ Father: editor-‐in-‐chief, New York Times magazine
¡ Busy guy ¡ Decided to write for high school paper ¡ Assigned to cover run-‐of-‐the-‐mill burglary
¡ Came home from reporting the story ¡ Wrote draft of story, showed to father ¡ “This is terrible.” ¡ Did you call the school? ¡ Phone book: Mrs. Berman at home
¡ Did you interview the police? ¡ Homework ¡ Subway on a school night ¡ Police station
¡ Father flipped through notes. ¡ Miraculously, found a quote from a school security guard
¡ “Worst thing ever saw” ¡ Another miracle: Had noted she had worked at school for nearly 25 years
¡ Father edited my story. ¡ Translation: He rewrote it. ¡ Lede: “In the worst breakout of burglary in nearly a quarter century…
¡ Page 1 ¡ Hooked
Finding and pitching your best investigative business story
To begin with, you need PHOAM ¡ P:assion ¡ H:ook ¡ O:riginality ¡ A:ccess ¡ M:arket
Image by flickr user marttj
¡ They usually come from beats.
¡ That’s because they’re organic. They arise naturally in the course of reporting.
¡ To wit: Secret bonuses at City Hall
¡ The anonymous tipster on AOL
Image by flickr user MonkeyMike
¡ This is not the same thing as a preconceived notion.
¡ Rather: Consider a set of questions that need answering.
¡ To wit: When cigarettes are under attack, why are cigars being glamorized? (Yachting magazine)
¡ Let’s say you think you’ve hit on a great idea.
¡ How do you check it out to make sure it’s uncharted territory? ¡ Lexis-‐Nexis ¡ Amazon ¡ Google ¡ The overriding question: Has it been done before?
But who has time to pursue investigative business stories, especially when you’re on a busy beat and your editor is breathing down your neck to file early and often?
¡ Get out of the office: kill or be killed. ¡ Cub reporter: worked on vacations—only time the editors couldn’t assign stories
¡ Worked on weekends ¡ Worked after hours, after the proverbial smoke cleared from the daily deadlines
¡ Bottom-‐line: find time
¡ Darwinian approach: only the fittest will get on Page One
¡ In the old days: Only three stories on Page One
¡ Lot of reporters, few A1 slots ¡ Mistake: Walk into your editor’s office with an ill-‐conceived idea.
¡ Such as: I’d like to do an investigation of poverty
¡ Many a times: Bludgeoned in editor’s office
¡ Finally figured out: Need to do some research before entering the torture chamber
¡ But how much research?
¡ About 20 percent ¡ That’s enough to tell you if you’ve got a story or whether you’re going to spin your wheels.
¡ The 20 percent solution: § What’s the story? § A new trend? § A twist on an old idea? § How will you report it, and how long will it take?
¡ Mistake: Never show editors your raw notes.
¡ Made that mistake on AOL
¡ Editor: Don’t get it, nothing here. Go back to work.
¡ Then Enron happened
¡ Editors: What was Alec working on?
¡ This time: I wrote a memo
¡ Set free for a year
¡ Having a year to do an investigative business story sounds better than it is.
¡ You better come up with a great piece. ¡ Can you withstand making no progress for several weeks at a time? § Maybe inbred
¡ Back to the memo
¡ It clarifies the issues. It makes editors see. They can print it. They can ruminate over it. They can forward it by email to their bosses. Then, they can approve it.
¡ Let’s say your editors still say no.
¡ Then what?
¡ Set your own agenda.
¡ The old model: the three-‐part series that took a year to report and runs in December in time for the Pulitzer entries
¡ The new model: write episodically.
¡ WSJ did this: Word was sent out at the beginning of the year—let’s write about death.
¡ The episodic approach, it’s the way of the world: the economy, the industry. Investigative reporting is expensive.
¡ Build on your beat coverage.
¡ Think this way: once a month, craft a great piece of investigative reporting on the same subject.
¡ Over a year, you’ll end up with 12 pieces that amount to a worthy in-‐depth investigation into a single topic.
¡ The Las Vegas Sun, most notably including the reporting of Alexandra Berzon, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for public service, for a series of stories about the high death rate of construction workers on the Las Vegas strip.
¡ Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post, 2008, for international reporting, for his episodic stories about private security contractors
¡ Kevin Helliker and Thomas M. Burton of The Wall Street Journal, 2004, explanatory
reporting, for their episodic stories about aneurysms
¡ Please feel free to contact me at alecklein@gmail.com.
top related