Saturday, January 9, 2016

Investigative Teams Usually a “White Male Crowd”

N.Y. Muslims Win Another Victory Over Illegal Surveillance

“NABJ Baby” Says Advocacy Role Has Dimmed

ISIS Finds Supporters Even in Caribbean

Short Takes

The Georgia News Lab, shown here last year, is a collaborative investigative reporting initiative among Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV. (Credit: Georgia News Lab)

Investigative Teams Usually a “White Male Crowd”

Melvin Claxton remembers working on an investigation at the Detroit News that landed a finalist spot in the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2003.

The News looked at “how the failures of Wayne County law enforcement agencies allowed more than 26,000 fugitives to roam the streets of Detroit with little fear of apprehension. It also showed that many of these fugitives continued lives of crime while on the lam,” the News summarized at the time.

Most of those fugitives lived among black people, who were terrified and victimized by the criminals in their midst. But Claxton said it was a struggle to persuade News editors to prove through News reporting that authorities were wrong to say these fugitives couldn’t be found.

“I understood that most of the people were good people forced to live with criminals,” Claxton told Journal-isms by telephone on Friday. “Others felt that these neighborhoods are just crime-ridden. Nobody seemed to care. Nobody felt any urgency to put them [the criminals] away.”

As it turned out, some fugitives were hiding in plain sight. Kenneth Everhart, for example, had received a notice for jury duty, the investigation discovered. He had a lawn-cleaning business that ran a quarter-page ad in a local newspaper.

From left: Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Brian d’Arcy James on the “Spotlight” set.

“This is why you need people of color. I might have had a little more concern” in that situation, “had a greater sensibility,” said Claxton, who is African American.

“Blacks in the newsroom need to be part of those discussions and part of those projects. It’s not all skills.”

Claxton’s work at the Virgin Islands Daily News won the newspaper the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1995, and he has been honored 10 times by the Associated Press Managing Editors. Claxton left the business in 2007 and formed a video-game company with his sons, he said, after becoming disillusioned by a trend he detected that valued less substance and more fluff.

Yet he keeps in touch with his investigative journalism colleagues. Their concerns deserve a listen in light of the well-deserved attention given “Spotlight,” the acclaimed movie about the Boston Globe’s revelations of sexual abuse by pedophile Roman Cathoic priests. In a coincidence, the Globe’s work bested The Detroit News’ fugitive series for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for public service.

The “Spotlight” team, in the movie and in real life, included no people of color. Privately, some journalists of color refer to investigative teams using such language as “exclusive for the white male crowd.”

Professional organizations such as Investigative Reporters & Editors are trying to address the problem, as is an innovative program among Georgia colleges, but the pale nature of the “Spotlight” team is typical of investigative teams at most newspapers, according to journalists in the field. Reasons range from the unglamorous nature of the work to exclusion of journalists of color from the old-boy network.

Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, rose to prominence as an investigative reporter. He shared a Pulitzer for investigative reporting in 1988 when he led a Chicago Tribune team of three in documenting corruption in the Chicago City Council, and he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 in the investigative reporting category while at the Times.

“I was an investigative reporter at three papers,” Baquet messaged Journal-isms on Saturday. “I’ve led teams and been members of teams. I rarely saw other investigative reporters of color at IRE [Investigative Reporters & Editors] and other conferences. I can only guess but [that] most veteran minority reporters opted for politics or other types of projects. Maybe it is because those beats had a more direct impact on the lives of other people of color? I don’t know the answer.

“But there is great investigative reporting being done by minorities today. Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative reporter. Coates’ piece on reparations was certainly investigative,” he said, referring to Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic. Hannah-Jones joined the New York Times Magazine from ProPublica last year.

Cheryl W. Thompson, an investigative reporter at the Washington Post who is also an associate professor at George Washington University, says investigative work can be daunting. “I teach at George Washington. There are really few who get it and want to do it for a living,” Thompson said by telephone. “It’s a different kind of reporting, and you really have to have the stomach for it.” Among other skills, it requires patience and

determination, the ability to wrest information from those who don’t want to provide it, data skills, and critical thinking, reporters said.

Thompson said she joined this subset of reporters because “I had an editor who pushed and pushed me” when she was at the Los Angeles Daily News in the early 1990s. “I got into it and I loved it.”

Ginger Thompson, who left the Times for ProPublica, does not believe that lack of supply is the issue. “Of course African Americans are interested in investigative reporting,” she messaged. “However I do think we are disproportionately underrepresented in investigative units just the same way — and for the same reasons — that we are underrepresented in most news organizations, particularly in positions of seniority.”

Others in the small circle of black investigative reporters say steering has much to do with it.

“I’m sure there are some journalists of color who wouldn’t want to go weeks or months without seeing their bylines,” Ron Nixon, a specialist in computer-assisted reporting and a correspondent in the Times Washington bureau, messaged. “But I think that’s true of many journalists overall, since investigative work means long hours away from family, etc. Plus spending long hours poring over documents and getting doors slammed in your face isn’t exactly sexy.

Dean Baquet, left, and Ron Nixon

“That being said, I think it boils down to a lack of opportunity, which means in some cases it does mean that editors aren’t assigning blacks and others to these teams. Many of them assume that blacks and other journalists of color aren’t interested, so they don’t ask or encourage.

“But it’s also structural in that it’s not how we are steered from college throughout our careers. A lot of young black journalists want to be a Stephen A. Smith [or an opinion writer, he added later] rather than a Leon Dash or Les Payne. They also don’t know that Dean Baquet or Acel Moore, among others, won Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting.

“So the people we are taught to look up to aren’t the ones who have done this type of work. Most of my career has been spent as an investigative or projects reporter and most of the people who served as mentors were white. I’m sure a lot of other black journalists who do investigations will have similar stories.”

It’s also a question of comfort, said an investigative reporter of color who did not want to be named because of the delicacy of the situation.

“The white editor looks over the story and says, ‘I’m going to be on the hook for this.’ ” Do they want to put themselves in that position over a story by a black reporter? “They start to show some incredible bias that wouldn’t necessarily exist for other people,” this reporter said.

In addition to prying information from sources and public records, investigative reporters must be good negotiators inside the office. They must persuade their editors that the story is important, and then to run it. “You’ve got to push though their ignorance” sometimes, this reporter said.

In November, as “Spotlight” was creating buzz, Los Angeles Times Editor Davan Maharaj messaged his newsroom, “We will soon re-establish a team of reporters in Metro focusing on accountability journalism.” The team “has not been picked but Davan or I are happy to confirm that diversity is at the forefront of hiring,” S. Mitra Kalita, managing editor for editorial strategy, messaged Journal-isms. (Globe “Spotlight” team leader Scott Allen did not respond to emailed requests for comment about the Globe team’s diversity.)

Investigative Reporters & Editors is among groups becoming more inclusive of journalists of color, reporters said.

“I’ve been a senior manager overseeing investigations for more than 20 years and I haven’t seen much change during that time,” Mark Rochester, a veteran investigative reporter who now edits the Herald in Rock Hill, S.C., wrote Journal-isms. “It’s frustrating because I believe there are far more journalists of color pursuing professional development and training than ever before.”

Yet, Rochester said, “I see their ranks growing significantly as members of Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc., for example.” However, he continued, he sees them “seldom as full-time investigative team members.”

Mark Horvit, IRE’s executive director, told Journal-isms, “When members sign up for IRE, we ask their gender and race.” He added, however, that “more than half don’t tell us.” Still, its convention in Philadelphia last summer was its most diverse, Horvit said.

On Thursday, District Attorney Robert James of DeKalb County, Ga., announced that he would seek a six-count indictment, including two counts of felony murder, against DeKalb County Police Officer Robert Olsen. If indicted, Olsen would become the first Georgia law enforcement officer in five years — a period that spans 184 cases — to be prosecuted for fatally shooting a civilian last March, Christian Boone reported for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

That’s partly the work of the Georgia News Lab, a collaborative investigative reporting initiative that is a partnership among Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV. The newspaper and television station are part of Cox Media Group.

The students did research on police-involved shootings in Georgia, director David Armstrong told Journal-isms, as part of an AJC series, “Over the Line: Police Shootings in Georgia” and a counterpart on WSB-TV. Discussing diversity reminds him of the saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” Armstrong said. Instead, “We said, ‘Let’s make it rain.’ ”

Seven of the lab’s 12 students are African American, and one is Asian American, Armstrong said. Nine are women.

“If you can’t do diversity in Atlanta, you’re not trying,” he continued. “We want to be a seedbed. We want to bring in more partners, more schools, not just be some little boutique operation.” He sees the program as a model and touts it for “what it says about how investigative reporting can go forward.”

Now in its second year, the project won a $35,000 microgrant for 2014-15  from the Online News Association’s Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education. In September, it won the $65,000 grand prize from the same organization. It also received $30,000 from the Cox Media Group for 2015-16, a second $5,000 Gannett Foundation media grant for 2015-16 and $5,000 more from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, also for 2015-16.

In addition, the project won the top prize for student investigative reporting from the Georgia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists this year.

As young reporters, Armstrong said, the program’s graduates are easier on the budgets of news organizations, they put the news outlets in touch with a younger demographic and, with their diversity, reach new consumers. Those factors inevitably improve the news product.

Officially, according to the project’s website, “The Lab’s goals are to train young investigative reporters, produce high-quality public service news stories, and bring added diversity to newsrooms. Through this collaboration, university educators and professional journalists train students as real-world watchdog reporters.

“Students from participating schools receive practical, hands-on training, learning to use documents, databases, digital tools and interviews to conduct in-depth investigations of powerful people and institutions. They meet with investigative reporters, government experts, data specialists, multimedia journalists, videographers and other professionals to learn specialized reporting methods and techniques for delivering their stories across platforms. Through this intensive year-long process, the Georgia News Lab hopes to foster a new cohort of investigative journalists who can contribute to their communities by producing in-depth, multimedia reports on issues of significant public interest.”

• Jill Geisler, Columbia Journalism Review: 10 resolutions for a new year (“9. See ‘Spotlight,’ again”)
• Susannah Nesmith, Columbia Journalism Review: Investigative reporting is ‘still a very white male business’  (Sept. 18, 2014)
• Marquette University: Marquette College of Communication announces next class of journalists to join O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism (April 20)
• Shawn McIntosh, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: New investigative partnership offers promise for students, readers (April 13, 2014)

“18 Degrees North” interviews Sheikh Faisal, a Muslim cleric from Trinidad and Tobago who says, “My ambition is to migrate to the Islamic State and to live within the caliphate.” (video)

ISIS Finds Supporters Even in Caribbean

Americans were shocked to learn Friday that a Pennsylvania man confessed to shooting a Philadelphia police officer “in the name of Islam.”

But a South Florida television program that covers the Caribbean aired a story last week about ISIS supporters in that unlikely region.

Zahra Burton’s “18 Degrees North,” described as a “60 Minutes”-style program focusing on global issues and Caribbean investigations, airs on CW affiliate WSFL-TV in South Florida.

In Episode 4, a Muslim cleric identified as Sheikh Faisal from Trinidad and Tobago is one of several interviewed. “My ambition is to migrate to the Islamic State and to live within the caliphate,” he says.