5 takeaways:
➀ The best investigative stories often come from beat reporting. Investigative reporter Chris Hamby’s current project came in part from a beat reporter. One of his New York Times editors suggested a focus on the strategic national stockpile, and why the United States was ill-prepared for the pandemic. “At the same time, one of our health policy reporters in the DC bureau had been hearing a lot about … how important this one company was strategically in the nation’s biodefense preparations, the stockpile,” he said. “And so they matched me up with her and we have been reporting partners.”
➁ Sharpen your focus before plunging in. Carefully consider whether your proposal is an actual news angle and not just a general topic, Hamby said. “For example, not, ‘I want to write about air pollution.’ But rather, ‘I want to write about how these companies have exploited this regulatory loophole in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 to avoid compliance with updated emission standards over the years.’” A scope that’s too broad can lead to frustration and wasted effort. “A lot of the best investigations are things that are narrowly-tailored, but go very, very deep on that subject and you just really dig in.”
➂ Solid investigative angles can be hidden within one-off stories and language that obfuscates. Another lengthy project began as Hamby was reading about a mining dispute in El Salvador. “Deep into the story, there was this paragraph that said that there was some sort of private arbitration by this company.” Hamby didn’t know it was possible for a company to demand private arbitration against a sovereign nation. “I started looking into it and it’s one of those things that it seems very complex at first, but the more you peel away at it, it’s just really common-sense ideas that are cloaked in these fancy terms.”
➃ Ask “Who’s being harmed?” “Is it waste of taxpayer money? Is it a specific subset of a population suffering acute health effects? it sounds obvious, but if you can force yourself to define exactly what the harm you think is there—obviously you don’t know when you’re starting out, but you think at least is going to be there—then it really focuses the reporting.”
➄ Talk to as many people as possible—then talk to more. Investigative reporters must accept that they’ll do a lot of work that never ends up being published or broadcast, Hamby cautioned. Hamby starts projects by reading as much as he can on the subject. “The sources that you have early on are often people like academics, NGOs, think tanks…I’m probably not going to use most of that material in the story…But those little nuggets that you get that make the story will only come after you’ve done a ton of other work laying the foundation to get there.”
Speaker:
Chris Hamby, New York Times investigative reporter, formerly at Buzzfeed and the Center for Public Integrity; author of “Soul Full of Coal Dust”
This program, part of the Paul Miller Fellowship, was funded by the Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation, Johnson & Johnson and its employees, in honor of the late Wanda Moebius, and other donations to the National Press Foundation, which is solely responsible for its content.
