Chapter 1 – Introduction
In this chapter, you will find answers to the following questions: What is investigative reporting, and how does it differ from other types of news coverage? What qualities make a reporter investigative? How has the Internet presented investigative reporters with new challenges while giving them exciting new opportunities to gather information, find sources and tell the story?
Note: Click tabs below to toggle content
Exercises
Expand your knowledge of investigative reporting
- Go to the Web site for the journalism organization Investigative Reporters and Editors. Pick one investigative story that is spotlighted on that page. What was the focus of the story? What are some ways the reporters might have seemingly “stumbled onto” that story? Is there a way the story could apply to your town?
Big Story Steps
Looking for possible investigative topics
- 1.1 On paper or computer, make a list of the last five books you read for pleasure and the magazines you read or documentaries or fact-based dramas you chose to see in the theatre or on television in the past year.
- 1.2 Out of this list, which topics seem to interest you enough that you would seek out a diverse range of materials about them? In other words, what do you naturally want to find out more about on an ongoing basis?
- 1.3 Narrow down one of those wide subject areas to a topic to investigate that you could picture as a documentary or series of articles that could spur positive change.