Writing and Editing and Investigative Projects
By Andrew Wellner
William Heisel
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An investigative journalists’ job is only half over once they’ve dug up the dirt – then they have to figure out how to turn all those names, dates, facts and figures into something the public will pay attention to.
William Heisel, investigative reporter for the Orange County Register, gave journalists tips for surviving the process during the discussion “Writing and Editing an Investigative Project.”
Heisel cautioned journalists not to over-hype a story to an editor. “Promise good and deliver great,” he said, adding reporters should confine their initial pitch to information they know to be true and do enough prep work to get an editor interested and onboard with the project.
Maintaining your own interest in a project is also key, he said. Try to keep in mind what got you excited about the story in the first place, he said, because it’s usually a long and exhausting process of information gathering before you start the writing and editing of an investigative project.
By the time reporters sit down to write, they may have lost sight of the story’s impact and importance, he said. “I keep a diary of things that get me excited.”
Another important part of an investigative project is organization. Heisel recommended creating a phone log in Excel to track the date and time of calls to sources as well as what was discussed. “Sometimes, I take full interviews in there,” he said.
After the story is written, it is time to step back and question everything one more time. One good way to do this is to ask yourself: “How do you know this?”
“Sometimes an editor who may be confident in your abilities may not think to ask,” Heisel said.
Every journalist’s nightmare is being on the wrong end of a libel suit. Besides consulting lawyers, Heisel suggested not blindsiding sources. For many of his own stories, Heisel said, he was on the phone reading back potential leads, headlines, quotes and whole paragraphs to sources months in advance of publication.
Journalists should also carefully consider which editor-suggested changes they choose to fight over. “Don’t assume that everything the editor wants changed or cut is something to scream and fight over.” But, he said, “ultimately it’s your name on the story and if something bad happens, yeah the editor will get heat too.
“But you’re the one that has to take all the calls.”
Marc Duvoisin, assistant managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, joined Heisel on the panel to offer a few tips to editors, as well as journalists.
As an investigative editor, “you are holding the reputation of the paper in your hands [and are the] last line of defense against lawsuits and mistakes,” he said.
Duvoisin said he tries to encourage reporters to arrive at what he calls “ground truth,” a term borrowed from U.S. intelligence agencies used to denote factual information which is verifiably true.
When a reporter arrives at ground truth, he or she can write with greater authority and not rely only on quotes, sworn testimonies and government documents.
Duvoisin also encourages journalists not to use anonymous sources. “It’s one thing to gather information that way,” he said, “but it’s another thing to publish relying on that information.”
Once the story is written and the journalist thinks it is complete, Duvoisin said it’s a good idea to hand a copy to a trusted colleague for review. At this point, “the smallest criticism can sound like a nuclear weapon has gone off, [but] you will be grateful for it 9 months later,” he said.
Editors should also take into account the peculiar personality of investigative journalists, because they have a “prosecutorial mindset, some might say a missionary mindset,” he said.
Editors should use their perspective to watch for a tendency that investigative journalists have of so identifying with their sources that they adopt that source’s worldview. Editors must also avoid letting reporters hang a story on a phony news peg. When a reporter says a story has to run because the 13th anniversary of some event is coming up, an editor should ask, “Is anyone going to care one whit more?”
David Donald, training director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, emphasized the importance of crunching numbers and then placing them correctly in the story.
Journalists have too many excuses when it comes to dealing with numbers, such as, “Oh, I don’t do numbers,” he said, or “I’m a word person,” or “We’ve got our nerd.”
Perhaps even worse, he said, journalists say things like “My source will give me the numbers I need.”
Although numbers are important, journalists should keep in mind that many times numbers are little more than educated guesses, Donald said.
“We have this assumption that numbers are hard, cold facts,” he said, but in reality “they’re often squishy, soft opinion.”
Techniques such as rounding off numbers or translating them into analogies (for example, by computing how much a city deficit would cost per person in the city) will give readers more of a sense that these numbers are estimates.
Journalists should go by a few specific rules when placing numbers in a story, Donald said. No more than two or three numbers should be placed in any one paragraph, and no more than two number-laden paragraphs should appear sequentially in a story. Dates and spelled-out numbers count.
To avoid number-laden paragraphs, journalists should get used to using terms like “up,” “down” or “hundreds.” If all of this fails, journalists should be willing to put numbers in graphic form or even into a break-out box. Reporters should also get to know their organization’s graphic artist or graphic reporters.
Editors should remain skeptical of numbers as well, he said. “When the number is too good to be true, it probably is,” he said.
Journalists should always double and triple-check their calculations, Donald said, and offered up some resources:
- Journalists should Google the terms “misleading graphics,” to find out how not to create graphics.
- They should then “get, read, study and live with,” Edward Tuftie’s “Visual Display of Quantitative Information.”
- Every journalist should have a copy of Sarah Cohen’s book “Numbers in the Newsroom.”
“I think every newsroom,” Donald said, “should have Sarah’s book behind glass, with a sign reading, ‘In case of journalist doing math, break glass.’ ”
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