Going Beyond Basic Reporting

Sarasota Herald-Tribune editor, Chris Davis, has a great deal of investigative knowledge when it comes to in-depth investigating reporting. I have never seen such great works of journalism, even in the most prominent Floridian publications.

I learned a lot on how crucial it is to go further than just interviews when looking up facts for a story. Davis said that reporting is more than just asking questions. Real journalism should always consider using public records for gaining more factual information. He mentions that journalists look for public records to find information that people wouldn’t normally tell anyone about because they may willingly try to hide the “truth” from the reporter. Even the simplest stories should be public record “friendly”. For example, cop beats. The reporter could use public records to look up arrest reports, incident reports, and court dockets.

The story “Flipping Fraud” was very impressive when looking at the amount of time and effort that was put into this piece. The story was about how some people were buying properties under false appraiser names, and then selling them “double” the amount the very next day. Davis said that it took several months of investigating, contacting appraiser agencies in over 60 different counties, traveling to those counties, and scanning appraiser databases to see what properties were being flipped and going unnoticed. This piece took up a great amount of time, and believe it or not...MONEY!

It was incredible on how Davis and his staff of investigative public record reporters were able to contact a great percentage of appraisers and gather other information to form their own concise database. This technique of “crunching the numbers” by taking broad information and condensing it to form a database with smaller numbers is known as database reporting.

Davis also gives advice to those wanting to pursue a career in enterprise investigative reporting that it may be a little time-consuming. Many reporters/writers may juggle up to 3 stories a day and still try to spend as much time on an enterprise piece, which can take up to 3 months of conjuring up information. In doing this, Davis reveals that a journalist must know how to juggle a heavy load or find a publication that will allow you to concentrate fully on just the enterprise stories.

“I don’t have the silver-bullet to tell you how to do it. But organization is important and keeping your priorities straight, not forgetting that you have to put time over here [smaller stories]. You got to feed the beast. You got to keep your boss happy.”