Projects

Here are some helpful ideas, culled from various seminars, on conceiving, organizing and executing an enterprise project. I also now see that much of this is covered in the book “The reporter’s handbook: an investigator’s guide to documents and techniques” by Steve Weinberg of IRE.

The Paul Williams way

He wrote a book called Investigative Reporting and Editing that laid out these steps:

  1. Conception of investigation:
      a. one-time tips
      b. figure out how to deal with the crazies
      c. regular source cultivation
      d. clips, legal ads, professional newsletters (for other professions, doctors, chemists, league of municipalities)
      e. angle after the one-time story
      f. looking: walk-arounds, drive arounds of municipality
  2. Feasibility
      a. obstacles - be honest and brutal
      b. resources - document availability, reporter aid availability
      c. competition on it?
  3. Go or No Go Decision?
      a. have you promised the minimum story?
      b. Base building - research list for standards. What should be happening?
      c. Create a timeline. It will show you your gaps.
  4. Planning
      a. organize files
      b. duties
      c. schedule - plot it out, day by day
      d. OPRA needs
  5. Original research
      a. paper and data trails
      b. people trails
      c. reevaluate along the way
      d. how often?
      e. Analysis of gaps?
      f. Make sure the story is still about humans, not just numbers
  6. Writing and rewriting
      a. outline or write first draft and then try to write an outline based on that
      b. chronology
      c. write a lede every day and see how appropriate it is
      d. bring in graphics folks
  7. Publication
      a. devise a follow-up plan. Next day phone calls.
Another plan for organizing the piles of paper and data you will compile in the process of reporting out a project, based on a seminar led by Jo Craven McGinty at the 2005 SAJA conference:

Type your notes immediately after each bout of reporting
Write a draft of the story and lede from those notes.
Dealing with your notes immediately helps you capture the moment.

Label - Save and label spreadsheets, databases and folders

Reshuffle - That tottering pile of paper on your desk needs to be put in some coherent order. Create a manilla folder for each document and its accompanying memo. You should also create this for your electronic records. The names of the folder should correspond to the filenames on your computer.

Reclick - Make folders on your desktop (both real and virtual) to track these types of material:

  • News clips
  • IRE tipsheets
  • Official (government) reports
  • Correspondence
  • Data
  • Audits
  • Memos
  • Sources (interviews)
  • Stories in progress
  • Other (scrap folder)

Save Everything! - Even the scrap. You never know when or how it will come in handy, but it will.

Track correspondence and calls, including dates, times, and exchanges, with public agencies, especially in a spreadsheet

For your out-going correspondence, save the letters in Microsoft Word files. Save the date the letter was sent as part of the file’s name.

For each document, she’ll write herself a one-page memo to summarize it. This is especially helpful when you start getting government reports and audits that run into the hundreds of pages. She then uses Excel again to keep track of documents, memos and people.

Audit - Keep track of how you run any database analyses

For CAR, she writes down the question she wants to answer in English, then answers it, writing down the query and the result, in a memo to herself

Annotate - Your memos and stories

Conceptual revision - Create a spreadsheet to answer questions for youself about how the reporting is going. At the top of each column will be a question:

  1. What do I believe to be true?
  2. What do I know to be true?
  3. What can I prove?
  4. What do I need to prove what I believe?

I have found this tracking spreadsheet to be very helpful in guiding the whole she-bang.

Tipsheet