https://soundcloud.com/iowawatch/the-iowawatch-connection-program-144-the-difficulty-of-investigative-reporting
Seldom has so much attention focused on how journalists gather and report news. But news consumers in the 2010s want to know whether or not what they read or hear in the news is true and why investigative reporters pursue particular stories.
“Curiosity is probably the number one trait or skill, or mentality is probably the better word, that a journalist can have,” IowaWatch‘s co-founder Stephen Berry, author of the textbook, “Watchdog Journalism: The Art of Investigative Reporting,” said. “And then you have to have a sense of: what part of my curiosity is going to be something that is going to solve a problem, or answer questions of the people that are going to be reading our stories?”
Berry, a professor emeritus from the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and IowaWatch executive director-editor Lyle Muller spoke with IowaWatch Connection host and producer Jeff Stein in a program for 20 radio stations that air the IowaWatch Connection about the work needed for investigative reporting.