Chapter 13 - Advanced Reporting Methods

Investigative reporters employ various methods to carry out their investigations, depending on the size of the project and the subject they want to investigate. In this chapter you will learn about several different advanced methods: undercover reporting, submersion journalism, distributed reporting, crowdsourcing, investigating an individual versus an institution, computer-assisted reporting, and the running investigation. Finally, you will get an overview of methods for keeping your information secure, including noteworthy examples and tips from the experts.

Note: Click tabs below to toggle content

Exercises

Practice crowdsourcing and other advanced reporting techniques

As a simple crowdsourcing project, select someone in the class who is a member of Facebook. In the person’s status box, post this question:

“I am trying to collect examples of bad housing conditions. Does anyone out there have a story to tell me about their current housing situation or know of anyone with a good story?”

See how many anecdotes and examples you can collect as a result.

Come up with five questions that could be put to a readership as part of a hypothetical crowdsourcing project in your local area. If you were the editor of your local newspaper, how would you go about getting your readers involved in an investigation into those questions?

How would you go about investigating the questions you came up with in Exercise 2 through submersion reporting? How difficult would that be to do?

Try to think of a story that would only work through undercover reporting. Why would other methods not work? How can you minimize possible ethical problems regarding deception, privacy and trespass?

Big Story Steps

Writing the third draft, creating a timeline and watching out for legal problems

  1. 13.1 Write a third draft of your story that focuses on making your story as convincing as possible.
  2. 13.2 Create a timeline for your story, either as a print graphic or multimedia. Remember, sites like dipity.com provide free timelines.
  3. 13.3 Go to the Web sites of the Student Press Law Center (splc.org) and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (rcfp.org) and see if you can find advice from legal experts to guide you in dealing with those legal and ethical problems
  4. 13.4 Assign someone to be a devil’s advocate. That person should try to punch holes in your project from a legal and ethical standpoint. The rest of the group must be able to respond to the devil’s advocate’s arguments. If you can’t, try to come up with an alternate method for investigating the problem.