{"id":1352,"date":"2015-02-10T19:57:49","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T00:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debjnelson.com\/?page_id=1352"},"modified":"2022-09-22T16:09:32","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T20:09:32","slug":"picking-and-pursuing-investigative-projects","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/debjnelson.com\/?page_id=1352","title":{"rendered":"Getting started: How to pick & pursue investigative projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

People frequently ask how often I spend months investigating something only to hit a dead end. My answer: Rarely. While investigative reporting is by nature risky business, there are steps you can take at the start to improve the chances of delivering at the end. Here’s an excerpt from an IRE Journal<\/em> article I wrote while the Washington investigative editor at the Los Angeles Times that outlines a strategy for\u00a0evaluating and testing project proposals before committing significant time and resources.<\/p>\n

Plot it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The greater a story’s importance, the more time and resources I might be willing to invest in it. So I use a simple graph to plot the relationship between significance and difficulty. While this is usually a mental exercise, plotting the proposal on paper with the reporter might be useful too.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>Projects that are important – yet easy to nail – fall into the upper left corner. \u00a0Important but difficult to prove? Upper right.\u00a0Easy but of minor import? Lower left.\u00a0Tough work that’s inconsequential to readers? “Just-say-no” territory.<\/p>\n

The graph is a starting point for a discussion with the reporter. Deciding what makes a project proposal important will involve a fair amount of give and take. Does the problem waste thousands of tax dollars or millions? Does it affect a hundred people or a thousand?<\/p>\n

Once the project is charted, you may decide to go ahead with an insignificant but easy story because it’s an exceptionally good yarn. At the other extreme, you may want to do a reality check before embarking on an important project that is exceptionally difficult. This sort of analysis also may help choose between competing proposals or\u00a0to assess whether to add time and resources to an ongoing reporting effort.<\/p>\n

Alan Miller brought two great project ideas to me a few years ago. They both looked challenging yet important enough to justify considerable time and effort. But he could not undertake two major projects at the same time.\u00a0After he did some scouting on each of them, we concluded that the first proposal\u00a0involved the threat of serious harm, while the second involved actual and ongoing harm. Actual harm scored higher on our “importance” scale. So ultimately we went with that one. We made a good decision. Miller and Kevin Sack produced a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on the deadly track record of the Marine Corps’ Harrier jet.<\/p>\n

Test it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Make a list of the basic facts that must be proved before a story can be published. Identify which of these make-or-break facts is easiest to prove, and check it out first. If true, move on to the next fact. If false, move on to the next story idea.<\/p>\n

We went through that drill when Ken Silverstein and Chuck Neubauer pursued a tip that the daughter of U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.)\u00a0had been hired to lobby for East Bloc businessmen receiving political favors\u00a0from her father. Both reporters receive many more promising leads than they\u00a0can ever tackle. So we are always looking for the most economical way to\u00a0weed out the bad from the good.<\/p>\n

In this case, we identified three baseline questions and some likely places\u00a0to find easy answers:<\/p>\n

1. Was Weldon’s daughter a lobbyist? State corporation records, federal lobbyist\u00a0registration records, federal foreign agent registration reports, clips.<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Did she have East Bloc clients? Federal foreign agent registration\u00a0reports.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. Had Weldon done political favors for them? Congressional Record, press<\/em><\/p>\n

releases, clips, foreign-agent registration reports.<\/em><\/p>\n

Neubauer and Silverstein decided to check the foreign-agent registration\u00a0reports first. The law requires lobbyists, public relations consultants and others\u00a0to provide the Justice Department with names of foreign clients and services\u00a0provided to them. The reports are available without a Freedom of Information\u00a0Act request. The office is just a short walk from our Washington bureau, and\u00a0the reporters figured they might find answers to all three questions there.\u00a0In fact, the reports confirmed all our baseline facts and provided intriguing leads that guaranteed this would be a successful project.<\/p>\n

As a reporter in Seattle, I had a messy pile of tempting leads on my desk, when I received an anonymous tip that two local tribal officials had built a 5,300-square-foot house for themselves through a federal low-income Indian housing program.<\/p>\n

As with the other leads, I quickly mapped out the essentials:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. ls there a big house?<\/li>\n
  2. Is it owned by the tribal officials?<\/li>\n
  3. Was it built through a federal low-income housing program?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Seemed to me the easiest first step was to see if a big house sat where the tipster said it did. So I drove to the reservation.<\/p>\n

    After passing tracts of tiny houses and old trailers,\u00a0I found the luxury domicile – and one of the\u00a0tribal officials. He admitted that he owned it with\u00a0his wife, who ran the tribe’s housing office.\u00a0He also told me their house was financed\u00a0through a bank and not through a federal low-income housing program. Even so, I’d confirmed\u00a0in less than three hours that two out of three of\u00a0my essential elements were true. That gave the tip\u00a0enough credibility to justify spending a little more\u00a0time to determine if he was telling the truth about\u00a0the financing.<\/p>\n

    A subsequent FOIA response showed that the\u00a0tipster was right on all counts – and the house might\u00a0be part of a national pattern of abuses in HUD’s tribal\u00a0housing program. The project grew from there into\u00a0a nine-month investigation with two other reporters\u00a0that produced a Pulitzer-winning series.<\/p>\n

    Launch it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    THE basic WHAT-WHY-WHEREFORE<\/em> INVESTIGATION REPORTING PLAN<\/p>\n

    WHAT: Document the problem What happened? How many affected? What consequences? Examples?<\/em><\/p>\n

    WHY: Determine the cause What and who are responsible?<\/em><\/p>\n

    WHEREFORE: Identify the solution And why isn\u2019t it getting fixed?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. You have critical mass.<\/li>\n
    2. The reporter has stopped making significant\u00a0forward progress.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n