Finding the best investigative story ideas

Cheryl W. Thompson, NPR

Ziva Branstetter, The Washington Post

Pat Beall, The Palm Beach Post

OVERVIEW:

Don’t pick topics, you should be able to frame your story in a single sentence that says what new truths
you plan to reveal. The sentence should have a verb and is often in the form of a question or an
assertion:

Why haven’t the world’s largest chocolate companies stopped using child labor, despite promising 20
years ago to do so?

Tesla is failing to report serious employee injuries it is required by law to report because it prioritizes
production over safety.

If you have a theme or a topic but not a focused idea yet, spend time “pre reporting” and vetting.

● What else has been written on this? Break news or break ground.
● Don’t fall prey to confirmation bias. Look at all of the reasons your theory may not be correct.
Talk to people who are likely to be critics.
● After you’ve done this groundwork, talk out your idea with people who are removed from it.
● Write up a one-page pitch

Questions to ask yourself:

Will it be a story either way? What’s the worst-case scenario? Would you still have something to show
for your time? It’s fine to risk some time on drilling a dry hole. But the time risked should be in
proportion to the promise of the story. What’s the minimum story and the maximum story you’d get for
your time?

Is this a good story compared to other possible stories you are considering? We call this triaging story
ideas. Be ruthless about it. You can always come back later to the idea when you have more
information.

Does this story reveal harm or just potential for harm? To who and how many people and in what way?
Were laws broken or does it just look bad?

Will it hold specific people accountable or just “the system?” How do you plan to identify and track
down those people?

Is it even possible that the story can create change and fix something? (It’s not a reason to discard a
story but it’s a consideration.)

Is there any obvious time hook? You’ll need to make the story relevant to what people care about today.
Are there compelling central characters? Are there available records? If so, how difficult will they be to
get?

Can the story challenge conventional wisdom and is it surprising? Those are big pluses.

Will telling the story possibly harm anyone who takes part in it? How so and what’s your plan to deal
with that?

Good habits to develop:

Build a pipeline of story ideas coming to you. Set up alerts for any topic you’re considering. Keyword
alerts in google are good but also include SEC alerts for companies, trackly can track changes in websites
and many government sites such as the Federal Register will alert you when something new is posted in
a particular subject area.

Make a new source each week and keep in touch with your sources, even when you don’t want
something from them.

File FOIAS for stories you don’t know about as well as for stories you do. If you cover government at any
level, especially state and local government, you should be routinely submitting FOIAs for payroll
records, expenditure records, contracts, lawsuit settlement, disciplinary actions, emails, calendars and
other raw material that will allow you to see red flags.

Search databases of public records for stories, especially criminal justice stories.

Follow the money and request records that could show excessive discretionary spending, including
travel records and taxpayer-issued credit cards.

Read the documents, pay attention to the footnotes. Look for lawsuit discovery, especially depositions,
even in cases that are old or may not be directly related to your idea.

Construct timelines to see patterns. Include events that may seem tangentially related. What date was
the city council vote on that tax increase? Had the city councilor who owns restaurants paid his taxes at
the time? The answer was no, he had not.

Talk to people in person. Don’t wait until you’ve got most of the story reported and a draft written to
“put a face on it.” Your stories should start and end with people.

In writing your story, whether it’s a big project or a rolling investigation, tell people what you don’t know
so they can help you fill in the gaps.