Investigative reporting workshop

By: Gaith S

You read the newspaper to find that some stories are longer than others. Some stories give in-depth information, while, others analyze situations. Have you ever asked what are the differences between the many articles you read in a newspaper?

Thomson foundation under the sponsor ship of the British embassy in Jordan held a three day workshop last week covering investigative reporting.

 The workshop instructors were David Quin from UK, he is a long time journalist working in Lebanon for many media outlets including the BBC, and Helen Scot an experienced journalist who worked for many years with the UK news paper the Daily Mail, and now owns a TV documentary production firm in UK that makes documentaries for the Discovery channel.

 The workshop covered many topics in investigative journalism, including the difference between news, feature analytical story and investigative story.

 “Before any thing you must know who is your reader” said Helen, adding that the journalist should know their readers in order to write any type of sorties that should be relevant to the readers.

 News stories are shortest among all kinds, it is 500 to 800 words long, and are time sensitive (something that happened now), however features, analysis and investigation are not time sensitive in general. A feature is longer a news story, it is around 800 to 1000 words and it can be about any subject and dose not necessarily cover two contradicting opinions, while analysis and an investigation includes oppositional opinions, and expert opinion.

 Analysis and Investigation stories are similar but analysis is shorter, a 500-900 words long. Investigation is in-depth journalism and it’s the longest when it comes to the number of words, around 1000 to 2000 words. It is regarded an original work and should be balanced, independent and objective. Besides the basic 5Ws and the 1H that is a must in every type of story, the What, When, Where, Who, Why and How, investigative reports must have the 3Rs, which are relevance, resources and risk.

 “Relevance is the question weather the story is relevant to the readers of the news paper” said David. Resources covers how much resources needed to collect and write down information bout the story, “the question should be is it feasible for the news paper?” he added.

 “Risk is what you might get in trouble if you go to the filed or publish the story” said Helen.

It is the Risks to the journalist, to the sources of information and the general public, to the newspaper it self, to the journalist family, to fixers, and to national security.

 Helen gave an example of the Risk to the newspaper when she was working for the Daily Mail in UK, she was once about to publish an investigation about a multinational company scandal in its operations in third world countries, in which the multinational company threatened to stop all it advertisement in the news papers if the Investigative report –IR- is published. But her editors stood by her side and published the IR. The multinational company stopped the ads for 6 month but after that they continued advertising again with the Daily Mail.

 Investigative reporting is new , true and interesting, it covers many issues such as, war (conflict), Self interest (human interest), National government, International politics, Local administration, Money, Big business, Health, Education, Sport, Environment, Personalities (role models), Crime, and Relationship.

 The best way to find ideas for IR – the sources- is through unofficial contacts, or through reading documents, or through lawyers, or court cases, or public places, or coffee shops, or night clubs, or readers letters, or telephone calls, or transport like from Taxi drivers.