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Investigative Reporting


Course Description

Students master investigative reporting techniques involving documents, data, and human sources. Special emphasis on investigating and holding accountable government and other major institutions. Students will produce a major investigative project.

Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Evaluation of graduate students differs significantly from that of undergraduate students. Not only will graduate students be assigned more readings and additional projects, they will also be graded with higher expectations than undergraduate students. Specifically, graduate students will be assigned an additional research or applied project depending upon the discretion of the instructor. Research projects may involve secondary research reviews and synthesis, whereas primary research studies will involve collection and analysis of data. Applied projects will consist of an original professional-level project delivered as a written report and/or oral presentation.


Athena Title

Investigative Reporting


Undergraduate Prerequisite

JOUR 3090 and JOUR 3190 and permission of department


Graduate Prerequisite

Permission of department


Semester Course Offered

Offered every year.


Grading System

A - F (Traditional)


Student Learning Outcomes

  • Students will develop a “documents state of mind” in approaching research questions, learning how to ethically and legally gather and present detailed information and interview sources to produce investigative stories.
  • Students will master the investigative process from hypothesis to production. The course requires students to complete a set of small and one major investigative project.

Topical Outline

  • The importance of holding institutions accountable
  • Methods of finding story ideas
  • The ethics of investigative reporting
  • Using state and federal open records laws
  • Requesting and receiving documents and data
  • Online and database research techniques
  • Identifying and interviewing sources
  • Numeracy
  • Making sense of documents and data formats
  • Analysis of data through spreadsheets, databases, and mapping
  • Presentation of stories in a multimedia formats