in-depth journalism

Bill Lucey of The Huffington Post featured InvestigateWest in an article about nonprofit investigative journalism in an age of declining for-profit newsrooms.

Lucey, a former South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter, began the interview by asking what it was like to watch the Seattle Post-Intelligencer close.  To be frank, it was horrible.  

But I've replaced that memory with a year of hard work at InvestigateWest. InvestigateWest has already published in-depth stories about the environment with MSNBC.com and about social justice with seattlepi.com, KUOW-FM and the Spokesman-Review.  

We've received support from some of the most sterling foundations out there -- from the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation for our Pacific Northwest Network, from The Bullitt Foundation for our environmental reporting, from the Fund for Investigative Journalism for an upcoming story about government mishandling of our most treasured lands, and from KUOW's Program Venture Fund about Native efforts to stem the tide of drug abuse.  

Folks, I said when I was starting what turned out to be just a tiny bit of time off over the holidays that Dateline Earth would return in early January. While I still hope that will be true -- early January technically runs through the 15th, right? -- it's going to be a little longer than I'd hoped.

The reason: I'm wrapping up an in-depth story. Remember those? This first major outing for me under the InvestigateWest banner promises to be eye-opening for those interested in environmental health. I need to concentrate on finishing the writing, fact-checking, and so forth.

Then I'll be back with posts about that story; about the topics I mentioned when exiting stage right around Christmas, including one idea about how to start the process of reversing global warming; and reflections from the Multimedia Reporting and Convergence Workshop next week at the University of California at Berkeley, sponsored by the Knight Digital Media Center and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. I was selected in a highly competitive process and look forward to the 12-hour days there because I'll learn a lot about multimedia methods to present our in-depth journalism.

Until then...

-- Robert McClure