How to Become an Investigative Reporter

and nobody would listen the scams are as old as the subway itself the city should have seen this problem coming investigative journalists focus on stories where the subjects or the information is harder to get at it's hidden and it just takes us taking a step back to say wait a minute let me ask a big question [Music] here I'm Chris glor o it team investigative reporter at NBC New York welcome to nbcu Academy the difference between an investigative story and a daily news story is you have the the who what when where and why but

most of the time you only have time to get to the who what when and where what makes investigative journalism a little different is that we really focus on the why why is this happening here's this nugget of information that I'm seeking but how do I get that information this homeless mother has been living here for 3 months I don't think it's good sourcing is one tool so many public servants so many people in government so many people in the business World they want the story to come out they trust us because they've seen our

work uh and they know that we do have the public interest at our heart we're all analytical I've really tried to focus on taking that step back and maybe reading up on a subject or reading up on prior investigative reports that happened 10 or 20 years before but they can help illuminate what's the right question to ask today the question that no one asked at that press conference another tool is how do we make sense of data we crunch School Bus bills across New Jersey and developed this map how to take big vast troves of

government data and find patterns in them last year the IT team was watching we reviewed dozens of hours of archived video every New York Senate committee meeting and I think that those three baileywicks if you will you know your sources your analytical your mind itself and and your ability now to use technology to uncover patterns those are three really good tools three children were sickened and one-year-old Nicholas dominici was killed a child at a daycare was poisoned by fentanyl investigators came in and they say they found fenel literally on the mats that children sleep and

play on the day care operator her husband and tenant now facing murder charges there was a lot of good reporting that came on that day that that child died and in the days following but nobody really had the time to ask should this be that shocking and so I began to look at what data is out there what do you know we found a database that has the locations not just the address but the longitude and latitude of every regulated daycare center in this city the n ypd keeps a very detailed database with every drug

arrest and again it happens to have longitude and latitude and now I can put together a bigger picture to see how often this is happening where it's more likely to happen and then go ask some tough questions this city was shocked by the death of that little baby but are you concerned there are going to be more when I have a script it's all ready it's ready to go on TV it's been through lawyers it's really you know through the ringer I go sentence by sentence and I say can I prove that it really is

keeping an open mind it is true that a lot of this subject matter is depressing it can weigh on you and I'd be lying if I said it didn't sometimes weigh on me but I feel lucky because I can quickly channel that into wait a minute how can I make things better tomorrow and that is the best part of this [Music] job