Every reporter eventually runs into a story so important that it’s worth getting the information on a confidential basis. But you’d better understand your news organization’s position on unnamed sources before you make any promises.

Many newsrooms require a supervisor’s approval before confidentiality can be ensured. That usually means the boss will need to know the source’s identity, and the source should be aware of that before making any deals. But how many others in your news organization will be told the name of your source? And how far will your bosses go to support a confidentiality agreement? Will they protect you from having to turn over notebooks or raw tape? Will they pay for your legal defense if you’re found in contempt for not disclosing the identity of a source?

At a recent IRE workshop, Josh Meyer of the Medill National Security Zone emphasized the importance of establishing ground rules up front that apply to both journalists and their sources. “Let them know that if you find at any point that they have lied to you or misrepresented the facts, the deal may be off,” he said.

Lawyer Bert Bruser, counsel to the Toronto Star, advised journalists to avoid leaving any paper trail that could identify a source. Don’t write the name in your notes, he said, don’t mention it in email, and get rid of any documents with the source’s name on them.

Better yet, don’t quote or refer to unnamed sources in your stories. Instead, “use anonymous sources to point you toward key documents, data or story ideas,” panelists said.

One other obvious piece of advice: make sure you and your source agree on what you mean by the words you use when discussing ground rules. I’m always taken aback by the number of journalists and officials who think “background” means “off the record” and vice versa. This glossary of interviewing terms covers the most common ground rules.

Be aware, too, of the perception by some PR professionals that there really is no such thing as “off the record” and who may be counseling the people they advise not to provide any information on that basis.

Sourced from: NewsLab

“I really like being able to provide people with answers that they don’t have the time or the patience to uncover themselves,” says Walsh.  ”I primarily have been looking at government agencies and issues of transparency and accountability.  Everyone has access, but unfortunately it’s time consuming to get it, so as an investigative journalist you’re really providing a service.”

WPTV’s investigative unit recently produced a story about six-figure salaries within local government agencies.  Walsh made it possible for viewers to search the data themselves.

Walsh has been out of school for just a few years, but she says technology has made it easier for younger journalists to produce investigative stories.

“With everything going online with tools and data and all the data mining you can now do, those of us who grew up with the Internet and who work with the Web on a daily basis have an advantage going in,” says Walsh.

So, what does an aspiring investigative journalist need to know?

• How to use Microsoft Excel and Access — two software programs essential for crunching data
• The laws journalists use to get public records at both the state and the federal level
• How to search through data and to build your own database

“I do everything in Google Docs and Fusion Tables,” says Walsh.  ”They’re easy to use and easy to share. I use Caspio to build searchable databases.”

Walsh says that because she made it clear to her employers that she liked this type of work, they gave her training opportunities.

“You have to learn how to ask for information and who to ask, and then be willing to pick up the phone,” says Walsh.

In her current role, Walsh works with a team of investigative reporters.   She sifts through and evaluates story tips, manages public records requests for the team, does shooting and interviewing and generally helps get stories on the air.  She says it’s not unusual to be trying to keep track of dozens of stories at once.

“To be an investigative producer, you have to be an organized person.  You have to be on top of things and meet deadlines, and you have to be flexible.”

Michael Morisy works for MuckRock.com, a web service that helps reporters file public records requests, track those requests and then share the data.

“So far we have helped file more than 700 requests,” says Morisy.  This week, multiple requests were made for surveillance or arrest data related to “Occupy Wall Street” and “Occupy Seattle.”  Another request involves state documentation of tornado damage in western Massachusetts.  The most viewed documents on MuckRock right now involve a list of the websites blocked from internal Air Force internet access as a result of the Wikileaks incident.

If you prefer to file your own requests, Morisy has three simple rules:

1. Keep it clean, concise and simple.
2. Confirm it arrived with the right person.
3. Be polite, understanding and slightly intimidating.

Morisy says the more specific and clear you are in your request, the more likely it is you’ll get what you want.  Before you send off your request, do some checking to make sure you’ve targeted the right person in the right agency.  And finally, don’t be hostile or rude, but do make it clear that you expect the request to be fulfilled and will follow up if it isn’t.

“After filing, follow up regularly – perhaps every 2 weeks – sometimes just asking for status can help it be completed,” Morisy says.

Morisy also offered up a couple of sites that might help you in your hunt for government records: DocumentCloud.org – Morisy calls this “YouTube for government documents” — and GovernmentAttic.org.  Both sites are searchable by keyword and filled with interesting government reports, which help you enterprise unique stories or add value to the daily turn.

“My goal is to go out and cover a story to make someone care about it,” says Huppert, “make you laugh or shed a tear.”

The award-winning reporter shared five solid pieces of TV storytelling advice at the Excellence in Journalism conference in New Orleans.

1. Find your focus. Huppert says he always takes time on the front end to ask, “What’s this story about?” His ability to find that focus and to stick with it, helps even potentially mundane pieces, such as an assignment to show how the economy is affecting people, become memorable TV.

“Focus equals the emotion and/or character and/or concept that holds the disconnected pieces together,” says Huppert. “It’s the spine that runs through it.”

2. Try the Christmas tree structure. Huppert likes to reward his viewers for sticking with him. So instead of the inverted pyramid approach, he likes to use the Christrmas tree.

“Each point on the tree is a reveal — I share the surprises I’ve uncovered with the viewer.  Before I write, I outline my surprises and build up to each.”

3. Sentences build to the most important point. Huppert also crafts his sentences carefully; his goal is to put the most important word in the sentence at or near the end. The reason? Your writing will have more impact on the viewer and they’ll have better recall of key points.

4. Write into your stand up.  ”Almost all of my stories have a stand up or live component,” says Huppert.  ”The best thing ever said to me by a photog is:  ’What are you saying BEFORE the stand up?’”  Huppert says that If you write the  lines in and out of the stand up first, the stand up itself will be more focused, shorter and better.

5. Try to get a “handshake shot.” When you meet someone for the first time, it’s not unusual to put our your hand and look them in the eye during a handshake.  Huppert likes to have that “handshake shot” in his stories, where the viewer can look the primary character in the face and get a sense of that person.

Huppert’s stories don’t just happen, they’re a result of his personal challenge to go beyond the standard.

“The time you spend on the front end standing back and thinking really pays off on the back end.”

One of the best local TV crime reporters I know recently left the beat after more than 30 years. Caroline Lowe, formerly of WCCO in Minneapolis, says police officials are notoriously reluctant to provide information to journalists. But if you know their rules, regulations and procedures, she says, you can ask better questions and improve your chances of learning what you want to know. In other words, a good crime reporter studies the beat.

Lowe did more than that. While working the beat, she earned a BS in law enforcement and a graduate degree in police leadership. Her studies gave her insights, she says, that helped her build relationships with police sources and tell stories that made a difference. “Nothing is more satisfying than doing a story that helps a victim or leads to positive change in the system,” says Lowe, now a bureau chief for KSBY in Santa Maria, Calif.

A feature on Lowe in the August issue of Minneapolis-St.Paul Magazine describes her as a detail-focused pack rat and “the queen of multiple confirmation,” who treated everyone from cops to victims fairly.

Lowe would make dozens of follow-up calls…to achieve a consensus and to protect her sources’ identities. If reporters sought to interview a victim’s family, nine times out of 10, Lowe was the first reporter invited in—because they’d seen her handle other crimes with sensitivity.

“One of the things I most respect about Caroline is she has empathy for everybody and she respects everybody’s dignity, no matter who they were or what neighborhood they were in,” says WCCO photojournalist Dave Chaney.

A good crime reporter also has to be tough, of course, to spend so much time covering painful stories. Lowe was plenty tough–not just on criminals but on “bad” cops. She won a duPont-Columbia award for an investigation that found police officers sleeping on the job.

Like every good beat reporter, Lowe specialized in cultivating sources and knowing how to reach them at any hour of the day. As WCCO anchor Frank Vascarello puts it: “What Caroline knows can’t be Googled.”

Sourced from: NewsLab

The executive summary doesn’t cut it. Reading just the introduction and conclusion isn’t much better. “Read the whole report,” Zwerdling said. “The best parts are often in the footnotes and appendices.” [Anyone who covered the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in the 1990s can testify to that. Among other things, the footnotes in the Starr report revealed President Clinton's hair-splitting on the meaning of the word 'is.']

Zwerdling encouraged reporters at all levels to think like investigative journalists. File FOIA requests regularly, he urged, and don’t take anything at face value. And before you quote something, “get the original source,” he counseled.

Consider the widely reported “government statistic” about six or seven years ago that 85% of immigrants picked up for being in the United States illegally abscond before facing a deportation hearing. Where did that number come from? Zwerdling discovered it came from a Justice Department report that actually said something quite different, if you read past the executive summary. Turns out the government was so inept it didn’t actually know what had happened to more than 85% of those immigrants.

Read the whole report. Good advice. You might find a different–and better–story.

Sourced from: NewsLab

Jerry Gumbert, CEO of AR&D, a local media strategy firm, says the No. 1 reason why TV news is flagging “has been a failure of news management to sustain focus on a formal beat system.”

News leaders have to realign priorities and reinstitute beat systems — and the kind of enterprise reporting that comes with them — if broadcast journalism is going to survive, he says.

Otherwise, TV newscasts will become increasingly indistinguishable from one another — a phenomenon already underway — as they become outlets for regurgitated or old news, he says.

“The result of this is catastrophic. It’s killing us because it dictates that we can only do superficial or reactive storytelling.”

In the last 15 years, the number of TV newsrooms operating with beat systems has plummeted to just one in 10, he says.

These are strong words from an article published in TVNewsCheck, but it’s an argument that some who study the economic of news have been making for some time.

Call it the “Wall Street Journal” argument, if you will.  Why is the WSJ one of a few newspapers that can put its content behind a pay wall and make it work?  Because the content is so compelling and unique that people are willing to pay a premium for it.

Most other news organizations produce “commodity news,” essentially it is content available from a myriad of outlets — and though journalists would like to think their unique approach and writing style makes a huge difference to the audience, it often doesn’t.

Unfortunately, most TV stations also put the bulk of their efforts into covering this commodity content, and it’s very hard to grow or maintain audience when you’re providing the same information as the other guy.

The challenge, as the article points out, is to continue assigning beats with limited resources.  So, help us out, how can stations do it?

Elected officials often don’t like the way they’re covered but they usually put up with it. After all, they’re on the public payroll and media coverage goes with the territory. But last month, in a 24-hour period, politicians on both coasts had it out with television journalists who cover them.

In Seattle, KOMO reports that the mayor’s office sent an email to the local television stations telling them not to crowd around the mayor at press events or try to reach him at home.

The email was sent shortly after a group of reporters and photographers approached McGinn at a Friday morning event to ask him about his appointment of a bicycle club leader to fill a $95,000-per-year transportation policy post.That impromptu question-and-answer session came the morning after a KOMO News reporter and photographer went to McGinn’s house at 9:05 p.m. to see if he was available to talk about the surprise appointment.

The email included this screenshot:

That’s helpful, right? My guess is that most people who saw the email had a good laugh and went back to work. But what happened in Georgia wasn’t so funny.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the governor’s press office was angry about a story by WAGA’s I-Team that a fundraising firm hired by the governor was connected to his daughter-in-law. So the next day, state troopers blocked a WAGA crew from covering a public bill signing.

Both the mayor and the governor may have legitimate complaints with their local stations, but their reactions seem out of line, don’t they? Are journalism students being taught how to deal with officials who want to control the news media?

Sourced from: NewsLab

As the award citation noted, “The team talked to dozens of victims, used local, state and federal public records, court records, surveillance and social networking to uncover the plot.” But just how did social networking come into play?

After hearing from two people who said they’d been tricked by someone named Greg Castle, Larson began looking for him. Turned out the man’s real name was Gordon Miller and guess what? He had a Facebook page.

“You can see people’s friends, if they’re not hidden,” Larson said. “Half of his friends were from Malaysia.” The background in Miller’s profile photo seemed to suggest that he was in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia made sense, because it has no extradition treaty with the United States.

“We developed a lot of information about him that helped with our sources,” Larson said. That information came in handy when Larson caught up with Miller’s parents, who confirmed where their son was living. “It arms you with so much more. All the little pieces come together to give you a better idea of who you’re going to talk to.”

Larson also sent messages to Miller’s friends, using his station Facebook account. If they responded, he told them what he was working on. Several people told him via Facebook that Miller had been in trouble before.

Journalists under-use Facebook, Larson says. “People are willing to talk. It’s like knocking on a neighbor’s door. They will tell you a lot.”

This video from the duPont ceremony includes part of Larson’s story. Definitely worth watching.

Sourced from: NewsLab

“Become a hybrid,” says Brian Collister of WOAI in San Antonio, Texas. Sell stories to your news director that are promotable and you’ll get the chance to do them, he told a TV news seminar in Austin. “News directors want numbers and investigative stories do that.”

To uncover stories that are worth investigating, Collister says, you have to think like an investigative reporter. Take nothing for granted, use open records laws and insist on knowing the basis for every claim. One of Collister’s favorite stories came out of a city press release crowing that work crews had filled a record number of potholes. When he checked the records, he found one pothole had been counted 43 times!

Be willing to stay late, come in early and make calls between shoots. And be willing to come up empty. “Sixty percent of what I do in research never makes the air,” Collister says.

Consider collaborating with another news organization, as Collister did recently with the San Antonio Express News on a story about flaws in the system for court-appointed lawyers. As a columnist for the newspaper later wrote:

Both news organizations brought different strengths to the table. WOAI told the story with pictures and audio, while the newspaper story went into greater depth and detail. Collister said he was pleased by the long, nuanced newspaper article. In most TV stories, he has to leave a lot of good material on the cutting room floor — that’s the nature of the beast in TV news, which is always crunched for time. So it was nice to have the newspaper story include points that he didn’t have a chance to air.

Mark Greenblatt of KHOU started as a general assignment reporter and worked on investigations on his days off. “You can be an investigative reporter right now,” he says. “You don’t have to wait for someone to give you the title. You get that mind set, you can change the world.” So what are you waiting for?

Sourced from: NewsLab