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Investigative Reporting in Print, Broadcast and the WebJ 260 – SEMINAR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTINGFall 2018 — SYLLABUSFridays 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.Conference room at the Investigative Reporting Program office (2481 Hearst Avenue)Credit 3Audit with permission of the instructorInstructors:Lowell Bergman: lowellbergman@berkeley.edu, 510-290-4909 / 510-643-1332Office hours Thursday 2 to 5 p.m. [contact instructor or Natalie Guttierrez (guttierrez@) ]Director of the Investigative Reporting ProgramJohn Temple: john.temple@berkeley.edu, 510-643-1309 / 202-440-2663For the special “Corruption in California” project, contact: Tom Peele: Tpeele510@ [re special seminar on public records][Robert Lewis, special reporter producer, Investigative Studios. re Investigative Studios Project. robertianlewis@Lucie Kroenig, Investigative Studios Associate Producer. Russia-Trumplucie.kroenig@Graduate Student Researchers: Josh Slowiczek: jslowiczek@berkeley.edu, 415-746-0114 Susie Neilson: susancneilson@, 202-419-2104 IRP Staff and Fellows available to seminar participants:Garrett Therolf: garrett.therolf@, 510-643-3066. ReporterJason Paladino: paladion.jason@, 510-643-6879. Information OfficerChris Bush: cbush@berkeley.edu, 510-643-1286. Director of Operations IRPElizaveta Osetinskaya: e.osetinskaya@, 510-643-6879. Fellow/Russia ProjectSusannah Breslin: susannahbreslin@, 510-643-6879. FellowLoi Almeron: loialmeron@berkeley.edu, 510-643-1190. Associate ProducerFor administrative questions re UC contact instructor or Chris Bush, Director of Operations for the IRP. REQUIREMENTS & EXPECTATIONS You are required to attend class on time, and be prepared to discuss and engage with class topics and scheduled speakers.You will also be expected to pair up with an IRP staff member or IRP fellows who have agreed to participate and work with you, or be part of a special reporting group [e.g. California Corruption, Russia-Trump, Juvenile Justice]. The goal is for you to become involved in a project for print or broadcast that is likely to be published in the academic year or soon after. With instructor approval, you may also suggest an ‘independent’ project to work on throughout the semester and/or academic year.Everyone will be required to submit at least one of the following types of memos:You can prepare a briefing memo on a guest speaker or an aspect of the subject we are going to cover in class. As part of preparing the memo you are expected to either meet with the guest prior to their visit or have a conversation with them on the phone. The idea is to sharpen your interview skills and that of your classmates through your memo.Alternately, you can write a memo that explores and evaluates a story lead. This can be a story lead you have found or one that the IRP has given you. Run your idea by a IRP staffer, Studios producer, Fellow before presenting it to Lowell or starting your memo.Prepare at least two memos of no longer than 500 words each reflecting your progress on a story you are pursueing citing techniques you have learned and used.Try to familiarize yourself with the history of investigative reporting. There will be references to it throughout the course of the semester. For a popular introduction to its modern roots go to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best seller, “The Bully Pulpit.” While primarily a history of Theodore Roosevelt and his friend, and later adversary, William Howard Taft, there are excellent chapters on McClure’s, the magazine, whose star reporters editors introduced America to muckraking. Try to read Lincoln Steffens’ Autobiography, Ida Tarbell’s The History of the Standard Oil Company and fifty years later Ferdinand Lundberg’s, Rich and the Super Rich. If you have not done so before, please become familiar with the key Supreme Court’s decisions in Times v. Sullivan and The Pentagon Papers cases. You can begin with Anthony Lewis’ classic book on the Sullivan case, “Make No Law”. Any of the books by Daniel Ellsberg, the ‘whistleblower’, whose release of the Pentagon’s history of the Vietnam War led to the Pentagon Papers case, will help you put this decision in context.We welcome hearing about your story ideas, and can direct you to sources of funding to cover expenses. There are many ways to help finance the expenses for your story. To begin take a look at the website of the Fund for Investigative Reporting. application/CREDIT: 2 Credits vs. 3 Credits?Students who only submit a memo and attend classes will receive two credits, while those who join in IRP projects will earn three credits. Students will be graded based on their participation in the class and the ongoing projects of the IRP.Make sure the GSR knows what level of commitment you have made to the program.If the instructor has granted you permission, you can also develop your own independent research project.Attendance/Absence policy:? The conventional university "Ten Minutes Late" start time (aka “Berkeley Time”) doesn’t apply to this class. 11:00 means 11:00. ? Attend all classes and be an active class participant. Don’t schedule interviews or reporting trips during class time unless you have cleared it with me in advance. Missing class?Here’s what’s acceptable: You have cleared it with me in advance and it is truly a can’t-miss opportunity.Serious family crisis has called you home. You are really sick, the kind that is contagious or requires a visit to the doctor. Exhaustion, feeling like you “might be coming down with something,” or a late deadline the night before don’t count. If there is a can’t-miss event like a family wedding that you need to attend, please talk to me about it well in advance. Here’s when you can’t miss: To do work for or attend another class.To do reporting for our class that I haven’t approved in advance.To do job interviews or meet with a recruiter. Don’t miss more than one class during the semester, unless there are exceptional circumstances approved in advance by the instructor. ABOUT THE CLASSThis class is both an introduction to the theory and practice of investigative reporting, as well as an opportunity for students to gain practical experience working collaboratively on a major in-depth reporting project. The seminar is both a place for students to be exposed to potential sources and practitioners of the craft as well as a venue to discuss and debate what we mean by “investigative reporting.” Because of ongoing dramatic changes in the journalism business and editorial developments here at the IRP, this course will be shaped in large part by ongoing reporting being done by both IRP and its affiliated production company, Investigative Studios. Go to our websites and for more details about the Program and Studios, respectively. We are involved in major reporting projects on: Corruption in California Russia-Trump Juvenile Justice Eavesdropping – History and LawIn the context of our own reporting and yours, the course will introduce and review the essentials of reporting in the public interest, including investigative methods, techniques from interviewing to the use of documents and public records, off- and on-the-record sources, ethical standards and the law. We also are committed to helping you become familiar with the history of investigative reporting, the legal issues and privileges we enjoy, and the techniques that will be of use to you as working journalists. To familiarize you with some of the history of investigative reporting and public interest journalism we will be hosting a series of events this academic year--from a tribute to the late Frank McCulloch, a legendary reporter and editor based primarily in California, to our annual Symposium in April. Also, our feature-length documentary, “Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?”, will be shown in a special screening this fall. In the tradition of the IRP, the documentary was the direct result of work done by graduate student[s]. A video interview with McCulloch was also the work of this seminar fifteen years ago!We believe you will learn by doing and that also means getting you published or credited for working on a film or other project for which you can receive a professional, not an academic, credit. Remember, the IRP is different. We operate year round. Our fellows are in residence for a year or more working on their own projects which will presented in the class. Our stories currently in production will be appearing in The Atlantic, KQED and on major Video On Demand sites over the next two years. In the past our work has appeared on networks from PBS to NBC from the News Hour to NPR and Meet the Press and in print from The Intercept to The New York Times. INVESTIGATIVE STUDIOSOver the last twenty years the IRP, and now its new production arm, Investigative Studios [IS], a non profit, has produced more than two dozen documentaries primarily for PBS and Univision. We about to premiere our first full length theatrical release documentary, “Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn?”, in film festivals. We aired an hour documentary this past April on PBS’ Frontline, “Trafficked in America,” which we funded and own. This third film in our series on the condition of workers in America chronicled the how Guatemalan children were trafficked to egg factories in Ohio. We recommend you go to the Frontline site or other outlets that carry the series, like Amazon Prime, to screen this lates film and its predecessors: “Rape in the Fields” and “Rape on the Night Shift”.Studios is the new production side of the Investigative Reporting Program and will be become more familiar to you through the seminar. We have ongoing productions in the works with Jigsaw Productions in New York, as well as with Luminant Media in Los Angeles. The seminar schedule will include presentations by our staff reporters/producers whose work will be premiering in 2018 and 2019. We expect that websites and other presentations will be generating work for graduate students, as well as our GSRs and other staffers and production personnel. We will discuss this and other related opportunities during the first two seminar sessions. In addition there is a special student and alum staffed investigation of “Corruption in California” that Tom Peele, a lecturer and recent Pulitzer Prize winner, is working on as an editor/advisor. This has grown into a project that now involves Investigative Studios. As a participant in the seminar you will be briefed and given an opportunity to get involved in these and other stories that are being pursued by the IRP staff and our production company. Each student will be required to get involved in assisting staff on one or more of these stories.The IRP’s overall goal is to get you involved in one of our ongoing projects or help you develop a story that you are passionate about and then get it published.Our fundamental principle is that learning what we call ‘investigative reporting’ requires doing it. You learn faster by having someone who knows how to do it helping you, or you in turn helping them. The IRP can provide financial support for projects and we recruit from graduates of the School. Most of our staff is made up of alums. [Please go to our website to get a full description of what we offer, special events, our new professional training courses, and the Symposium.] THE WORKSHOP, INDEPENDENT STUDY AND MENTORING If you are a first-year student, you may not be able to take the seminar [J 260] or the workshop. The workshop is only offered in the spring semester. But please feel free to make an appointment to see how we can help you with a story you are working on, or want to pursue, once you have completed J200. We have developed a unique expertise in multi-platform reporting [print, video, radio and the web] with an emphasis on collaborative work. FUNDING AND THE FUTURE OF THE IRP The Investigative Reporting Program, its facilities and staff are supported almost entirely by major grants and gifts. While we, like almost all other nonprofit investigative reporting groups, have relied on philanthropy, we are attempting to develop new commercial markets for our work, designed to diversify our revenue stream. To do that we have created--and the University is formally affiliated with--our production company. It’s an unprecedented partnership that was announced by the chancellor in April 2017. More on that in class.This new experiment is part of an IRP tradition. We have been a pioneer in forming collaborations with everyone from the New York Times and Frontline to Univision, as well as a wide variety of print publications and other nonprofits, such as Pro Publica and the Center for Investigative Reporting.Academic dishonesty and plagiarism (TL;DR: Don’t do it.):The high academic standard at the University of California, Berkeley, is reflected in each degree that is awarded. As a result, it is up to every student to maintain this high standard by ensuring that all academic work reflects his/her own ideas or properly attributes the ideas to the original sources.These are some basic expectations of students with regards to academic integrity: Any work submitted should be your own individual thoughts, and should not have been submitted for credit in another course unless you have prior written permission to reuse it in this course from this instructor.All assignments must use proper attribution, meaning that you have identified the original source of words or ideas that you reproduce or use in your assignment. This includes drafts and homework assignments!If you are unclear about expectations, ask your instructor.Disability accommodations:If you need disability-related accommodations in this class, if you have emergency medical information you wish to share with the instructor, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please inform the instructor as soon as possible by seeing him after class or making an appointment.If you are not currently listed with DSP (Disabled Students’ Program) but believe that you could benefit from their support, you may apply online at dsp.berkeley.edu. Note: Because of ongoing developments and the variety of projects at the IRP with their own deadline, a complete schedule of classes and special presentations and future assignments will be available in class. You can also check this site for updates prior to the beginning of class.SCHEDULE AND SEMINAR SESSIONS:A full schedule for the seminar is in preparation. Contact Professor Lowell Bergman, lowellbergman@berkeley.edu. There is no “merit fellow” this semester. Please contact Chris Bush, John Temple or Lowell Bergman if you have questions. Their contact information is on the first page of this syllabus or an IRP GSR, who are veterans of the seminar. ................
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