Investigative Reporting Workshop
Centers, Institutes & Programs >> Investigative Reporting Workshop
The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C., will undertake significant, original, national and international investigative reporting projects for multimedia publication or broadcast in collaboration with others, and will serve as a laboratory “incubator” to develop new economic models and techniques for conducting and delivering investigative journalism. There is no other university research center in the world examining new models for enabling and disseminating investigative reporting.
Investigative journalist and bestselling author Chuck Lewis, who has already founded three nonprofit organizations--including the Center for Public Integrity--will launch and lead a fourth: the Investigative Reporting Workshop (IRW) at American University in Washington, D.C. Serving as executive editor, Lewis will work closely with Wendell Cochran, veteran reporter and American University journalism division director, and Larry Kirkman, dean of AU's School of Communication. Lewis has assembled an Advisory Board of award-winning journalists from five countries.
What both journalism and democracy need right now are new economic models to support the work involved with bringing forth in-depth, multimedia news. --Chuck Lewis
Lewis describes his new venture this way in the Spring 2008 Nieman Reports.
There are many nonprofit organizations committed to investigative reporting in the U.S. and in the world. All are limited in various ways, from the caliber or number of experienced personnel to the quality and frequency of their publications or documentaries, to their ability to fully utilize the exciting new technologies and means of distribution. The net result is that important subjects desperately requiring responsible investigation and public education simply go unaddressed – by these organizations and the commercial press. When that happens, the public is not as well informed as it could be, important truths do not emerge in a timely, relevant fashion or at all, and accountability of those in power essential to any democracy does not occur. These trends are universal, irrespective of geography, climate or the country’s economic or democratic condition.
What both journalism and democracy need right now are new economic models – fit to meet the full range of our contemporary challenge – to support the work involved with bringing forth in-depth, multimedia news. These models will succeed if they can nurture a more hospitable milieu for investigation and exposure of abuses of power, and provide real-time truth and accountability to citizens. Because no one in power should ever be able to create their own false reality, or to even think it is possible.
