Readings #10, Post #20

Well its almost Thanksgiving time, but there's still a few weeks left to follow elections and learn new journalistic techiques. The latter of these two will be discusses today, using both an online aid and of course the textbook.

The online helper that I tried out over the weekend was ire.org, which is the home page for the Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc. Different pages, such as the "Extra Extra" section and archive listings have great resources for all kinds of journalists- reporters, reserchers, editors- and they are all pretty simple to navigate. The best page is the Initial Search Beat page where you can select at category and topic, and search the enitre database and externam sites for information about almost every topic. I search hurricanes in the Environment category and was pointed right to the National Hurricane Center, which has pretty much all the information you could ever want on the topic.

The textbook also ties some of these strategies in Chapter 18, which covers the broad subject of investigative reporting. A few terms like the opening hypothesis and the hard lead delivery are pretty easy to identify, but the book also defines the "sniff" stage of a report. The sniff is the reporter who noses around (get it) in search of a trail that leads you in the direction to find answers. Like a hunting dog, only instead of trying to shooting a buck, you're trying to make a buck (I'll be here all week). After a story is sniffed out, the real work begins. Like many other stories, interviews and research are key to finding the big news, and making sure every last detail is as accurate as possible. If human sources are used correctly as experts and eyewitnesses, written sources are made less dull and provide the hard facts, and the internet is utilized to its fullest extent to research background information, investigative reports will be both insightful to the readers, and rewarding to the writers.