UPCOMING EVENTS
Master Class in Investigative Journalism, Saturday, January, 21, 2012: How a few simple questions can lead to months of work, weeks of writing, and long hours of wrangling with editors about what not to cut.
Barbara Ross of the New York Daily News and Karen Freifeld of Reuters give a daylong master class in investigative journalism.
All kinds of things pass for 'investigative' reporting. Sometimes it's assigned. Sometimes you assign yourself. Many editors just like the simple stuff: "Get me expenses filed by the members of the City Council!" "Who are the top 10 contributors to each Senate candidate?"
Some editors get things started by asking obvious questions: "If that murder victim's widow is just a poor woman from Africa, who's paying to put her up in a hotel here and why?" or Haven't we had a lot of police shootings in that precinct in the last six months?
But often, it's the questions that reporters ponder that result in interesting investigations. Why am I paying $6 for a half gallon of milk? Why isn't the Attorney General going after that guy? How did that real estate developer get more than half the city's housing subsidies? Who is this guy from Brooklyn who got all the taxi medallions for handicapped accessible cabs; who does he know; how did that work? How did the city/state determine how much to charge when they sold that public land? What are charter schools REALLY so popular?
Two reporters who have spent much of their professional lives asking questions that go below the surface of breaking stories are happy to share some war stories with you and talk about projects you'd like to start. They'll walk you through publicly available data bases and give you tips on how to stay focused during a long term probe, how to organize your information to make it more useful and how to sell your stories.
Panelists:
Barbara Ross has been a reporter for the NY Daily News for more than two decades. She's covered scores of public corruption stories, criminal investigations and trials, from the infamous parking violations bureau scandals in the Koch era to the more recent probes of Pedro Espada, Carl Kruger, Malcolm Smith and Hiram Monserrate. Her favorite investigation in the past year has revolved around cows, bodegas and George W.
Karen Freifeld is a correspondent for Reuters who covers Manhattan Supreme Court, the state Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney. She previously worked for Bloomberg News, breaking many stories about foul play that led to the mortgage crisis and the state's pension fund scandal. She spent years working for Newsday and has written for ABC-TV's Good Morning America, Good Housekeeping and the Washington Journalism Review.
When: Saturday, January, 21, 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., with a 45-minute break for lunch
Where: The Newswomen's Club of New York @ the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, Manhattan
How much: $50 members; $100 nonmembers
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Workshop: Managing People in a Newsroom, January 2012
An all-day workshop for club members only. Details to come.
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Panel: How to Be a Columnist, January 2012
Featured speaker: Linda Stasi of the New York Post columnist. Details to come.
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Workshop: Getting Ahead in the News Business, February 2012
An all-day workshop for club members only. Details to come.