How to Tackle Large Investigative Projects and Keep Them on Track

The release of the Pandora Papers, the largest collaborative journalistic task in history, puts into perspective what is truly possible when investigative journalism is functioning at its best. The sheer amount of organization and work it took to accurately, reproducibly pursue the information about how various wealthy elites conceal their money is dizzying.

So how could one undertake a project like the Pandora Papers? While it’s tempting to jump on in and start investigating, the moving pieces behind the process are rather complex and take considerable planning and  organization. By naming the steps, hopefully we can demystify the process slightly.

INVESTIGATION REQUIRES COLLABORATION

Journalists know where their own strengths and weaknesses lie, and therefore, a newsroom collaborating on an investigative story has to bring its journalists to the story through the lens of their personal strengths. If every journalist in the room can rally around the story, then natural paths of action will become available. “We have grown up in a time when we used to think that one journalist can make a lot of difference, but with the world we are living in we are facing enormous challenges and it’s not a one-person job,” said Umar Cheema, of The News International, Pakistan. “More collaboration means a greater impact.”

PAINT WITH BROADER STROKES FIRST, THEN FOCUS

Collaboration also involves journalists stepping out of their specialties in order to cover investigative ground. Journalists should take a couple of weeks to cover broad investigative ground and then slowly, in concert with their collaborators, pare down their focus. 

UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE READING AND HOW TO INTERPRET THAT DATA

Investigative journalism yields a lot of information, and it’s important to know how to organize that data as it comes in. The first thing to do is check out the way this information is presented. Are they verified sources? Are there issues in ethos or logos as to how the information was reported? Next is to organize the data based on reliability, and begin to shape interpretations by giving the data context. Continue to pare down the focus of your investigative work until you get the simplest, most transparent version of the information you can distill.

KEEP A CHRONOLOGY OF THE INVESTIGATION

A chronology is one of the greatest tools journalists can have available to them. Chronology can help journalists reproduce the investigative process. Keeping your own chronology of this investigative process is helpful to future journalists, but can also be tremendously anchoring for your team during the process. If your investigation gets off track in any way, a simple look back at the chronology can give you a roadmap for getting back on track. You can easily identify key moments in the investigation, as well as draw connections and see how the story unfolds.

REMEMBER TO HAVE A LIFE OUTSIDE WORK

Some journalists can really fall into a black hole of endless investigation. This is antithetical to the success of an investigative story. “Everyone needs to find some kind of work-life balance for himself or herself. It’s important to know what level of risk you are willing to take to do this job,” said Pavla Holcová, a journalist in the Czech Republic. Creating a routine that involves breaks and time to spend with family, friends, or quite literally anything else but your work will make a big difference. It’s also suggested that journalists go into these investigations with an idea of the level of risk they are willing to pose to their own mental and physical health, as a number of outside circumstances could significantly endanger those things.

The investigative process can be exciting, but it’s important to approach it with a plan and a level of distance to keep yourself safe. The more guardrails you can give yourself and your team for embarking on this large project, the more trustworthy and safe the results you can produce.