Credit: Brant Houston/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting

The Minnesota Journalism Center’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication – in collaboration with the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, and Investigative Reporters and Editors – hosted the “Covering Big Agribusiness” workshop in Minneapolis on Oct. 3 through Oct. 5.

The workshop offered the basics in covering agribusiness and agriculture, no matter what medium or what size newsroom you work in. We featured expert speakers and tip sheets. We provided hands on training in computer-assisted reporting, while showing how to get stories out of easy-to-use data. We also covered environment, energy and government reporting.

Missed a chance to attend the workshop? Want to review all the materials we shared? Check out the session tip sheets and presentations, listed below:


Session 1: Overview of reporting on Agribusiness| A look at 20 different kinds of stories that can be done by all newsrooms

Brant Houston is the Knight Chair of Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (@branthouston) | Download presentation

Lyle Muller is the executive director-editor of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, IowaWatch.org. | Download tip sheet


Session 2: Covering agribusiness and food safety

Mike McGraw is a special projects reporter at KCPT. He works on agribusiness and government accountability stories. | Download tip sheet


Session 3: Getting up to speed when covering the agribusiness beat

Tom Meersman writes about farmers and farming for the Star Tribune. | Download stories | Download tip sheet

Lyle Muller is the executive director-editor of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch.org (@iowawatch). | Download tip sheet


Session 6: Covering agribusiness, labor and worker-safety issues

Miguel Keberlein Gutiérrez is the director of the Immigrants and Workers’ Rights Practice Group at LAF Chicago. | Download presentation


Session 7: Covering agribusiness and environmental issues

Josephine Marcotty is the environmental reporter for the Star Tribune. | Download presentation


Session 8: Covering agribusiness and government money

Lyle Muller is the executive director-editor of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism. | Download tip sheet

Pam Dempsey is executive director of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting (@pamelagdempsey). | Download tip sheet

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