In-Depth/Investigative Reporting



In-Depth/Investigative Reporting

h/t The Student Newspaper Survival Guide by Rachele Kanigel

“People have this misguided notion that investigative journalism is this voodoo thing that only select people can do,” says Matt Waite, a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times who has been doing investigative journalism since college. “It’s pulling documents, reviewing routine matters and keeping an eye out for trends for when something different happens. It’s watchdog journalism.”

Brant Houston, executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors and a professor of journalism at the University of Missouri, advises students who want to do investigative journalism to start by asking a simple question: “What’s not working?”

Why is the university parking garage already full at 9 a.m.? Why has tuition gone up? Why does a physically fit athlete have a handicapped parking placard for his car? Why is the roof on the new building leaking?

When he kept seeing underage friends drinking alcohol at local bars, college journalist Brian Krans got the idea for his first big investigative project. His journalism professor asked him to survey students for a top 10 list, and Krans thought: “How about the top 10 bars that minors go to?”

Over the next two months Krans surveyed more than 300 students about which bars were easiest to get into. He accompanied underage high school and college students as they entered bars with fake IDs and even used a counterfeit identification card to get himself into a club.

Here’s how his story began:

Andre “Dre” Klonecki, a senior at Winona Senior High School, wanted to go to the bars with friends from Winona State.

He did—using a fake ID.

The only shared trait between Klonecki and the ID, the top corner cut off and expired in 1999, was the red tint in Klonecki’s strawberry blond hair.

Klonecki—a tall 18-year-old man—used the ID of a man three inches shorter, six years older and 25 pounds lighter.

Given a quick glance, the ID might have resembled Klonecki, and that is all it took.

On Jan. 18, manager Tony Haglund was checking IDs at the front door of Bulls-Eye Beer Hall, a popular college bar.

Haglund inadequately checked Klonecki’s fake ID at the door and let him in with little hesitation.

At Bulls-Eye, Klonecki was served by three different bartenders and despite having 15 drinks, no one asked for ID again.

Public records

So many documents and records can be accessible to you—if only you know where to search.

Here are a few examples of documents that are part of the public record:

• Health department records on cafeterias and restaurants

• Lawsuits filed against the university

• University or department budgets

• University salary data

• Accreditation reports

• On-campus crime reports

• Criminal records of faculty members, administrators, athletes, staff

Story ideas

Crime

• Get crime statistics from your university police department for the last five years. Take note of trends—which are up, which are down.

• Ask for arrest records from campus police. Look for familiar names, trends, evidence of raids. Were a slew of students arrested for marijuana possession in a dorm last month? Was the dean of students arrested for DUI?

• Run key school officials—the chancellor, president, provost, dean, controversial professors—through a criminal records check.

• Do the same for high-profile students, such as members of the football team or student governing board or leaders of student groups

• Get information from the agency that handles parking on campus. Ask for lists of people who get handicapped placards, who have their parking tickets waived, people issued faculty (or other premium) parking passes. Make sure these people are legitimate. (In 1999, 19 football players at UCLA were cited for the illegal use of disabled parking placards.)

Budget

• Get your university or college’s budget for the past five years. Note which departments are getting more and less funding than before. Take note of the biggest changes.

• Compare budgets for different departments. Divide by the number of students in each department to find out how much the university is spending on different groups of students.

Athletics

• Find out how much your school is spending on team recruiting.

• Check the graduation rates for each NCAA team on campus. Compare those numbers to the graduation rates for the campus as a whole.

• Look at funding for athletic scholarships. You might compare it to financial aid for academic achievements.

• Find out what kind of perks your athletes get. Schools have been known to lavish gifts on their top players, particularly if they win an important game.

Health and safety

• Check the health inspection reports on the cafeterias and other food service establishments on campus.

• Find out which popular bars near campus have been cited for serving underage drinkers.

• If you’ve got a medical school on campus, check the licensing records of all MD faculty members with the state medical board.

• Use sex offender registries to find out about offenders who live on or near your campus.

• Check fire inspection reports on dorms, fraternity and sorority houses and other buildings.

Academics

• Look up the grade records on controversial or popular classes. You won’t be able to get grades for individual students but you should be able to get records without names. If Human Sexuality is reputed to be an easy A, report on the grade distribution. Compare different sections of the same course or different professors.

• Find out which departments are undergoing accreditation reviews. Study the accreditation reports to find the department’s strengths and weaknesses.

• Request salary data for all faculty members. Find the highest-paid professors and compare how professors in different departments are paid.

• Peruse the latest accreditation report for your school. Some colleges and universities routinely keep copies of these reports, which can run hundreds of pages, in the library. If you can’t find it there, try the university registrar’s office.

How to request a document (adapted from a guide by Amy Emmert of UCLA)

1. Find out what documents you need.

2. Find out who or what office holds those documents.

3. Talk to that individual, or an official from that office, to see if you can obtain the document from them.

4. If you are denied access, note the name of the person and ask him or her to cite the law that enables withholding the record.

5. If you are looking for a document held by a government agency (e.g., city or campus police, state board of health, etc.), use the SPLC’s fully automated, fill-in-the-blanks letter generator (foiletter.asp) to draft an official written request for the document. You might also try foi_letter/generate.php.

6. Different states have different numbers of days to respond to your request. If at the end of the waiting period you still have not received the records or you have an insufficient response, contact a media law expert or the Student Press Law Center.

Useful web sites for investigative journalists

Investigative Reporters & Editors



National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting



Freedom of Information Center

foi.missouri.edu

The Search Systems Free Public Records Directory



Center for Investigative Reporting



How to use the federal FOIA

foiact/index.html

Tapping officials’ secrets

cgi-local/tapping/index.cgi

The Scoop: Derek Willis’ weblog on investigative and computer-assisted reporting



Access to college accreditation reports

legalresearch?id=17

Student media guide to the Clery Act

legalresearch?id=19

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