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Degree and Year: BJ '73 (News-Editorial) Company: NBC News Company Web Site: http://www.nbc.com/ Title: Senior Investigative Reporter City and State: Washington, D.C.
When I have done everything I would have done for a newspaper story, I have done about 60 percent of what is required for a strong television story. Clearly, learning to do detailed, accurate reporting, as I did at newspapers, was good preparation for television. But now I also need to shoot interviews, which cogently tell the story, and find pictures to bring the story to life and enhance the narrative. What is the difference between "investigative reporting" and "regular reporting?" Investigative journalism is basically regular journalism with a focus on digging deeper. There is nothing mystical about it. It's asking more questions, and perhaps analyzing something in a way that is not generally done. When did you start doing more investigative pieces? I've always done a lot of investigative stories. Whether I was covering politics or covering Congress, scandals came along with some regularity in Washington and I became fairly adept at covering them. During the Clinton administration, I covered Whitewater, Hillary's cattle futures, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. After that I covered the Enron scandal. So, to some extent, it was a logical evolution from all of the investigative work I had done over the years. NBC News decided after 9/11 that they wanted to put more resources into investigative and enterprise reporting. To do that, you really had to take people off of their regular beats, so they have time to focus entirely on developing and digging up new stories. That's what I do now. What is a typical day like for you? There's not one! The only given is that we do a lot of document searches and talk often with sources, on and off the record. How do deadlines work for investigative pieces? We have goals in terms of when we want a certain piece to be ready, but you have to be very careful not to let the deadline drive the story. An investigative story is ready when it's ready. Yes, we will try and make it happen by a certain time, but sometimes the story just isn't ready and you just can't put it on the air. Fortunately, my bosses are very understanding about that; they don't want the story until it's ready either. You are one of the best interviewers in the business, but do you still find certain big interviews hard to conduct? Absolutely! Just because you've done it a million times doesn't mean you don't get nervous or apprehensive, particularly if it's a difficult interview and you are not quite sure how it's going to go. It is my job to put people at ease and make them comfortable with telling me what is going on. Sometimes you know an interview is going to be confrontational and you want to be sure you handle it properly; always being respectful of the person you are interviewing, but at the same time pressing him or her on issues on which they may be evasive. What is the hardest story you've covered? The murder at Fort Campbell, Ky., of a young gay soldier was a tough one. The U.S. Army initially attempted to cover it up, claiming his death was the result of an altercation. Our reporting revealed that it was an anti-gay hate crime. The young man had been beaten to death with a baseball bat while he slept. I also interviewed a woman from Arkansas, Juanita Broaddrick, who alleged she had been assaulted by then-Ark. Attorney General Bill Clinton many years ago. She said she decided to come forward all these years later because of more recent allegations about Mr. Clinton. While there was no way to corroborate her account, we were able to find a handful of people she told about the attack at the time it occurred. And, to this day, no one has come forward with evidence to disprove what Broaddrick says. That was an extremely difficult and politically-charged story. What has been the most difficult story for you to gather? Monica Lewinsky, because the people with the information we needed were the prosecutors. It was against the law, literally, for them to provide that information to us. What story has meant the most to you? The story that has meant the most to me over the years was the story at Fort Campbell. Private Barry Winchell was killed over the Fourth of July weekend. The base had put out a press release saying that his death was the result of an altercation, but some people came to me believing he was the victim of an anti-gay hate crime and that he was in fact murdered. We sent people to Kentucky to talk to the doctors at the hospital, and they told us he has no defensive wounds; his head had shattered like an egg shell. We were able to break the story about what happened to this young man and about the fact that the base had not done required "don't ask, don't tell" training. Turns out, Winchell had passed out on a cot from drinking too much, and someone beat him to death with a baseball bat. I am close to that young man's mother to this day, and I think that was an important story to tell; it was very important to his family. As a result of that story, some changes did occur within the military in terms of briefings and anti-gay harassment. The story mattered to me, because this was such a tragic time for that family and the family needed to know what happened and needed a sense of justice for their son. His mother is a very brave woman and now continues to petition the military to get rid of "don't ask, don't tell" and just let gays serve openly. Did you ever think when you graduated you would be where you are now? Oh, no, I was a news-ed major. I planned to work in newspapers, and at the time, my plan was actually to go to law school. I was going to do a few things with journalism and then go back to law school, but I ended up liking what I did. I certainly never had any anticipation of going into television. My first love was actually politics, but there were two problems. One, I couldn't bear to ask people for money and, two, my political views didn't fit in either political party...and I wasn't willing to change them. So basically, I ended up in journalism because it was a way for me to be around politics without having to engage in the parts of it that I didn't like. What advice do you have for students who want to be an investigative reporter? Gain the broadest possible knowledge, learn to think critically, and learn to pay great attention to detail. What is your best J-School memory? For one of my first assignments I had to cover a story at the Humane Society. I'm an animal lover, so I was in agony over all of the dogs that were there. I actually adopted one while I was there working on my story and took it back to the sorority house. I created a bit of an incident to say the least. I was told I couldn't keep the dog, but I managed to at least hide him for a few days. He was a wonderful basset hound that I named Lord Sebastian! News ReleasesRelated
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| Revised: 16 November 2009. Copyright © 2009 The Curators of the University of Missouri | Contact the J-School | |
