Below is short portion from “Working the Beat,” the second chapter in my book Learning Journalism Where Writers Rise.
No class in my journalism master’s program was more diversified than Brant Houston’s Reporting II class (JOUR 415). Reflecting on the material now, it is amazing how much we covered, read, and wrote.
It started with picking the type of beat you wanted to pursue for the semester — mine was education, and I covered the topic of truancy in schools. I wrote a story on an agency called Access Initiative of Champaign County, which, as of this writing, continues to assist troubled youth in the area. I wrote another article titled “Curbing school truancy takes effort on various fronts.” My lead highlighted a child named J’von Coleman, who overslept and biked 30 miles to get to school. The first sentence in the article reads, “Anyone despondent about chronic absenteeism issues in today’s public schools might find the recent story of J’von Coleman to be heartwarming.”
Houston wrote one of our class textbooks, The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook: A Guide to Documents, Databases and Techniques. The book is a must-have for any aspiring, and currently working, investigative reporter. Here’s what I wrote about the first several assigned chapters:
The book is a must-have for any aspiring, and currently working, investigative reporter.
This book begins by describing what investigative journalism is, how the definition of the craft has evolved, and what it entails. Good journalists in this line of work are curious and full of questions, healthily skeptical, and persistent in acting on behalf of the public good. Hard-working investigative journalists can make big discoveries.
The first chapter lists eleven common-sense steps it takes to potentially pursue a story, but to me, the most helpful paragraphs were on pages six and seven. I’ve never written in a “document state of mind” before, so I was curious about the best way to meld the official documentation with the human part of the story (the interviews). It’s clearly explained in The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook that the documents a journalist finds can dictate what the interview questions will be, and can help keep the interviewees honest. Investigative journalism involves writing a story based on official documents, with the appropriate interviewees coloring the article later with their thoughts that can either back up or contradict the information.
In the second chapter, readers learn about the wealth of secondary sources available to help write articles. Secondary sources include newspapers, magazines, newsletters, academic papers, and books. It was interesting to read about author Jessica Mitford’s insights into the differences between a publication that is for public and private consumption. Gaining access to an organization’s internal publication can be helpful to a journalist.
Online search techniques for reporters – ones that go beyond a Google search – are also covered. The chapter “Computer-Assisted Reporting” offers writers numerous ways to find web-based resources on well-known subjects. Many are aware of the evolving, high-tech media platforms available today, but fewer people may know about the plethora of ways journalists can attain information; even established journalists may not know all the resources they have at their fingertips nowadays.
Seven years after taking my class with Houston, he told me via Zoom that investigative journalism is in a good place thanks to the rise of nonprofit newsrooms.
“The nonprofit newsroom movement really got going because investigative reporters at metropolitan dailies, and other places but particularly there, were not able to do investigative work at the quality level they wanted to, or they were laid off,” Houston said. “So, what happened is that the people moved to nonprofit newsrooms, especially initially. [They] were looking to increase the amount of watchdog enterprises, meaningful investigative work.”
“[Investigative reporters] were looking to increase the amount of watchdog enterprises, meaningful investigative work.”
– Brant Houston
Houston’s class was full of hands-on activities that showed what dedicated journalists need to do to get detailed stories. In his class I wrote an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) letter to the Champaign Unit 4 School District, interviewed numerous professionals in the education field, and wrote several articles on a topic — chronic truancy —that I began to care more and more about.
Photo by Alejandro Escamilla
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