Three local TV stations have won prestigious Peabody Awards for the kind of in-depth reporting many stations no longer seem to value. In an era of budget cuts and layoffs, WWL in New Orleans, KMGH in Denver and KLAS in…
Award-winning investigations
Category: 04. Newsgathering: Digital
The Web changes crime & coverage
Crime reporting is a staple of local news, so it’s important for journalists to provide context for their stories. At the 4th Annual Guggenheim Conference on Crime in Society, dozens of criminal justice reporters, criminologists and representatives of law enforcement…
Confrontational interviews
Investigative reporters often have to interview people who don’t really want to talk. In a courtroom, they might be described as hostile witnesses. For journalists, especially in television, these kinds of interviews require a lot of preparation or choreography, as…
A successful reporter’s approach
He’s won three Pulitzer prizes, writes a regular column for the New York Times, and his non-fiction books sell like crazy. Okay, so Tom Friedman isn’t your average reporter, but a profile in the New Yorker magazine offers some insight…
Data for digging deeper
The Los Angeles Times has quietly built a huge online resource that gives users the opportunity to explore information on their own. The data desk holds the results of 38 projects and more than 730,000 records: databases, lists, maps and…
Network-local collaboration
CBS News has broken new ground both behind the scenes and on the air in collaborating with local TV journalists. For the first time, the network enlisted the help of reporters at local affiliates in reporting an investigative story and…
Small newsroom, big results
“Coincidence or Cluster,” an investigation by the Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, Illinois, proves you don’t have to be a big news organization to make an online splash. The small-circulation daily put together a meaty online version of its six-part…
New model for investigative reporting?
Everyone knows that newsrooms have been cutting staff and shrinking their budgets. When there aren’t enough people to get the daily job done, in-depth reporting can suffer. What’s to be done? Chuck Lewis thinks he has an answer. The founder…
Hidden cameras make a comeback
Did they ever really go away? SPJ’s Jon Marshall contends that hidden cameras fell out of favor in TV newsrooms after the ABC News-Food Lion case in 1992. On his NewsGems blog, Marshall writes, “Fortunately, it looks like they’ve made…
The best of the Web
If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then you might want to consider complimenting the winners of the 2008 EPpy Awards by imitating them. At the very least, you’ll want to check out what some of these folks are…