{"id":5695,"date":"2015-11-04T16:26:40","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T21:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=5695"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:49:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:49:29","slug":"four-steps-of-investigative-journalism-and-other-pursuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=5695","title":{"rendered":"Four steps of investigative journalism and other pursuits"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2002, I was asked to give a workshop on investigative reporting for journalists in Laos<\/a>. I was pretty surprised by this request.<\/p>\n

Laos was, and still is,<\/a> a tightly controlled Communist country. And yet, having given up central management of the economy, the party leaders had recognized that its media needed to do a better job of reporting. You can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy media.<\/p>\n

I don’t think they really knew what they were asking me for. “Investigative journalism” sounded sexy and, I guess, Western.<\/p>\n

I’ve often been asked to train on investigative reporting to journalists who don’t even have the most basic skills. In Laos, there was a level of na\u00efvet\u00e9 on top of that which made my task particularly\u00a0tricky. Plus, I had two days, which is really a ridiculously short time to train on advanced skills.<\/p>\n

I had to super-simplify.<\/p>\n

‘Investigative reporting has four steps,’ I told them. They looked at me eagerly, pens poised, good students, habituated scribes.<\/p>\n

‘Put your pens down. You can memorize these easily,’ I said.<\/p>\n

Now they looked a little concerned, and puzzled.<\/p>\n

I wrote on the whiteboard:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Try.<\/li>\n
  2. Try again.<\/li>\n
  3. Try harder.<\/li>\n
  4. Try another way.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The journalists started to smile.<\/p>\n

    These are steps, not skills like careful interviewing, organizing your data, and obtaining\u00a0multiple sources for every fact.<\/p>\n

    I’m talking about the steps that make the difference between completing an investigative report\u00a0and\u00a0just\u00a0having a list of questions and unfinished story ideas in your files.<\/p>\n

    I’m also talking about the steps that make the difference between journalism and not-journalism. The reporters and editors in Laos were still in the not-journalism camp. They weren’t trying to do anything except take dictation. Those few who\u00a0tried to do more stopped as soon as they met resistance.<\/p>\n

    None of them had ever gotten to step 3 or step 4.<\/p>\n

    The difference between people who are pros and people who just get by are steps 3 and 4. Lots of people do “Try” and “Try again.” And then stop.<\/p>\n

    Today I took my own advice. I didn’t want to go to my fused glass class. I was discouraged. I felt like I would never finish any piece<\/a> in this medium.<\/p>\n

    But then I saw the jewelry that\u00a0came out of the kiln, what I’d put together in\u00a0last week’s class even in the midst of my discouragement. And I figured\u00a0I might be on the way to\u00a0step 3.<\/p>\n

    \"jewelry<\/a> \"jewelry<\/a> \"jewelry\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Day 121: The penny is a 2002, for the year I was in Laos.<\/p>\n

    \"Day<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In 2002, I was asked to give a workshop on investigative reporting for journalists in Laos. I was pretty surprised by this request. Laos was, and still is, a tightly controlled Communist country. And yet, having given up central management of the economy, the party leaders had recognized that its media needed to do a … read more Four steps of investigative journalism and other pursuits<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[439,35,284,203,438,80,383,428],"class_list":["post-5695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shelter","tag-439","tag-art","tag-glass","tag-journalism","tag-laos","tag-life","tag-media-development","tag-reporting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5695"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6140,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5695\/revisions\/6140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}