About

InvestigateWest is a new model for investigative journalism focused on the Pacific Northwest and the West. We are an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to the art and craft of investigative and narrative journalism.

The old model for supporting and conducting public service journalism has collapsed. Thousands of traditional journalism jobs have simply vanished in this region, and along with them the opportunity for the kind of in-depth, investigative reporting and memorable storytelling that keeps citizens engaged and informed about changes shaping their lives. InvestigateWest continues the reporting essential to democracy. Our passion for investigative journalism is paired with the ambition to find and connect with new audiences using the new tools of the digital revolution now available to journalists.

Investigative reporting and storytelling takes time, resources and talent that many traditional news outlets can no longer afford. InvestigateWest was started by a group of accomplished journalists with a track record of producing investigative stories and, with them, change in public policy and corporate practice. Our mission is to cut across the old media borders to reach and engage audiences by new and powerful means.

We harness the synergies of the printed word with the evocative power of photography, video and audio to produce reports used and distributed by a wide variety of news organizations, whether online, print, television or radio. Our website is a forum where people can discuss and advance information essential to their interests and their future. As Eric Newton, vice president of the journalism program of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation recently said, “No community can clean up its toxic waste dump if it doesn’t know about it.”

InvestigateWest incorporated as a 501(c)(3) to conduct our journalism for the public trust. We are among the vanguard of non-profit news organizations intent on changing the way investigative journalism is funded. The new financial model includes foundation funding and individual and corporate memberships, but we adhere to the same standards that have always informed the Fourth Estate: integrity, fairness, and an independent quest for truth.

In addition to smart, street-level reporting, InvestigateWest capitalizes on the profession’s newest reporting and storytelling techniques, including crowdsourcing and database publishing.

InvestigateWest distributes its content through partnerships with media organizations and through its own syndicated news service. We are also building a membership base of citizen watchdogs who care about what’s happening in and to the West.

In addition to its core group of five journalists, InvestigateWest has contributing journalists throughout the West. These freelancers serve as listening posts as well as producers of innovative, insightful journalism.  InvestigateWest is also committed to helping train the next generation of journalists and has an active internship program with local universities.

The West, for those of us who live here now, or whose spirits remain here even if we’ve moved elsewhere, is a unique place of enormous diversity, fragile beauty, and complex history. Beyond a place, it is also an identity. The fault lines that underlie our geography also lace us and our fates together.

Westerners have always relied on a rich tradition of storytelling. At InvestigateWest, we plan to tell the story of the West for the 21st Century.