That's the advice of Gerry Ahern, managing editor for colleges and investigations at Yahoo! Sports, who along with Charles Robinson, the website's top investigative reporter, shared stories and advice about investigative journalism with a group of sports editors at the APSE Great Lakes Regional meeting on April 18 at Tribune Tower.
"Do what you can to distinguish yourself as a newspaper," Ahern said. "Differentiate your publication from the others."
Robinson, the dogged reporter behind Yahoo! Sports' shattering stories that resulted in Reggie Bush's returned Heisman Trophy and Jim Tressel's five-game suspension, shared some of the techniques he's used to become one of the best investigative reporters in sportswriting or any other form of journalism.
"There are more sources to be made now than ever before," said Robinson, who has worked at Yahoo! Sports for eight years after a newspaper career at the Orlando Sentinel, Oakland (Mich.) Press and Detroit Free Press . "And, it's easier to find sources than ever before."
Robinson, who also broke the story on NFL agent Gary Wichard's involvement with assistant coach John Blake and players at the University of North Carolina, said he's used tips from team trainers, managers, agents, bloggers, and many others to track his stories. Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter have also proven invaluable to his reporting.
"You'll be shocked the kind of information athletes will put out there," Robinson said. "Everybody follows the stars, but the bottom guys on the roster will talk about almost anything."
Robinson's love of investigative reporting began when he was a journalism student at Michigan State attending a conference that featured Kansas City Star reporter Mike McGraw, who had just published an eye-opening investigative series on the NCAA.
McGraw spoke of obtaining much of his information at the NCAA offices, where a secretary let him into a resource room, where McGraw copied documents for upward of three hours.
"I'm like, 'Oh my God,'" Robinson said. "I'm probably the nosiest person in the world. This is perfect for me."
Robinson has made extensive use of public records ever since, and he let the group of editors in Chicago in on one of his secrets: records requests by other reporters are public records themselves.
"That's another trick in the bag," Robinson said. "File a records request on the records requests."
Robinson and Ahern closed by saying they've never been concerned about rushing a story through to beat the competition.
"Don't come with anything until you come with the whole thing," Robinson said. "Your gut reaction is to get everything out immediately. It isn't until we have it all the way that we go with it. You bite the bullet on the smaller stuff."
"Those stories are out there," Ahern added. "But you have to be willing to go the extra mile. It's not 40 hours, it's not dipping your toe in — it's going all the way."
