Investigative Reporting
Investigative Reporting provides a step-by-step approach for tackling any investigative story, teaching reporters the skills they need to overcome common obstacles during investigative work. Experienced reporter and instructor Marcy Burstiner offers readers guidance on how to identify story ideas, craft a premise, seek out human sources and documents, file public records requests and analyze data. Including tips and advice from student and professional reporters, this comprehensive textbook also offers strategies for conducting interviews and for organizing information into a compelling story or series of stories that engage the reader through multimedia storytelling.
Highlights of the new edition include:
- Updated examples and anatomies of news stories.
- Extensive discussion of data reporting and analysis for investigative projects.
- Guidance on how to request public records using state public records acts and how to appeal denials of public records requests.
- Instruction on the use of free, collaborative tools for organizing, sharing and analyzing information.
- A new chapter on creating a fact-checking system.
- A section on careers in investigative journalism.
- Interviews with student investigative reporters from colleges across the country, with professional investigative reporters from non-profit news organizations, emerging journalistic outlets and advocacy publications, and with staff and freelance reporters who produce stories for mainstream radio, television, print and online news organizations.
Marcy Burstiner is Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at Humboldt State University, USA, where she teaches beginning and investigative reporting and advises the student newspaper. She is a member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc. and Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS), and co-founder of the Humboldt Center for Constitutional Rights.
She jumped into her professional journalism career as an assistant editor for The Multinational Monitor, a non-profit magazine founded by Ralph Nader. Before joining the faculty at Humboldt State, she was an assistant managing editor for financial magazine The Deal and a senior writer for the online financial news site TheStreet.com. In 2018, the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California chapter presented her with a James Madison Freedom of Information award for her journalism teaching. She is a graduate of Union College, USA, and the Columbia University School of Journalism, USA.
Investigative Reporting
From Premise to Publication
Second Edition
Marcy Burstiner
Second edition published 2018
by Routledge
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2018 Marcy Burstiner
The right of Marcy Burstiner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published 2009 by Holcomb Hathaway, Publishers, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Burstiner, Marcy, author.
Title: Investigative reporting : from premise to publication / Marcy Burstiner.
Description: Second edition. | New York : Routledge, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004483 | ISBN 9781138572157 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138572164 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780203702307 (ebk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Investigative reporting.
Classification: LCC PN4781 .B785 2018 | DDC 070.4/3dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004483
ISBN: 978-1-138-57215-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-57216-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-70230-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Interstate
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Visit the eResources at www.routledge.com/9781138572164
The methodology in this book came out of a class on investigative reporting that I have taught at Humboldt State University for more than a dozen years. So I need to thank first off every student in JMC 326 and 480. They all taught me.
For this second edition of the book I need to thank all the amazing investigative reporters and others who willingly gave me time, let me prod them with questions and gave me permission to reprint their work. In particular I need to thank Brian Bienkowski, Paul Nicholas Boylan, Jonathan Capriel, Lily Casura, Matt Drange, Lola Duffort, John Flynn, Lisette Garcia, Thadeus Greenson, Nick Grube, Amy Julia Harris, Craig Harris, Lisa Khoury, Peri Langlois, Nancy Cook Lauer, Myron Levin, Iain Oldman, Adam Playford, Marcelo Rochabrun, Ronny Rojas, Zoe Sagalow, Alejandro Fernndez Sanabria, Melissa Segura, Hank Sims, Paige St. John, Shoshana Walter, Sarah Wolstoncroft, Jie Jenny Zou and the great Rita Henley-Jensen, who passed away before publication. In addition, I need to thank the following organizations, which provided me with information and resources: Journalism and Women Symposium, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc., Gimlet Media, the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, the National First Amendment Coalition, the Sunlight Foundation, the Poynter Institute, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, Student Press Law Center, the Center for Investigative Reporting, ProPublica, FairWarning, the Center for Public Integrity, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting, San Jose Inside, the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Univision, The Princetonian, Eugene Weekly, Capital News Service, the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, The Spectrum at the University at Buffalo, Barbara Kingsley and the Daily 49er.
It was Mark Larson at Humboldt State University who first hired me to teach a class on investigative reporting, though I had no teaching experience. I should also thank that teacher in 11th grade at Roosevelt High School, whose name I dont recall, who first told me I could write.
All Good Reporting Is Investigative Reporting
I find it surprising that many journalists dont see themselves as investigative reporters. Some think you need a thicker skin to do that kind of in-depth reporting. Others think it requires you to spend months or years reading through tedious documents, something they dont want to do. Some people think you have to like forcing people to answer questions they dont want to answer. But really, all good reporting is investigative reporting. Thats because investigative reporting is simply asking questions that arent being asked and following through to get answers. Most aspiring reporters have questions in their heads they know are worth investigating. But often they push them aside; they dont know how to go about getting those questions answered, and they lack a system for carrying out an investigation over a long period of time.
