West Region meeting: Watchdog journalism requires commitment, determination

 

 

When it comes to watchdog reporting, there’s no substitute for dogged determination during the process – and that includes the level of support from the company.

 

That was a common theme during a panel discussion on investigative reporting during the APSE West Region meeting Monday at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix.

 

Craig Harris, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, stressed the importance of diligence and persistence when pursuing public records, as well as how much it means to have an editor who isn’t afraid to take risks and allows the reporter freedom to chase the story.

 

“If you have that support from high up,” Harris said, “everybody understands what’s going on and you can have a really good process.”

 

Harris took the group of sports editors through his efforts to uncover the lavish spending and questionable financial dealings of Fiesta Bowl executives and other Bowl Championship Series officials in a seven-part series “BCS: The Money. The Games,” which was published in September. http://www.azcentral.com/news/bcs/

 

Harris explained his methods for obtaining the crucial information for the story, which included filing more than 100 Freedom of Information Act requests, creating numerous spreadsheets to organize notes and contact information for officials, and routinely utilizing the information service Guidestar.

 

Harris said the Republic allowed him to concentrate on the series for several months, and even freed an experienced editor to work with him during the process.

 

He also pointed out that even though the newspaper’s publisher, John Zidich, served on the Fiesta Bowl’s executive committee, Zidich never influenced the reporting process. (Zidich resigned from the Fiesta Bowl in April; the newspaper remains a Fiesta Bowl advertising sponsor.)

 

The discussion, which was moderated by Lauren Gustus of the Reno Gazette-Journal, stressed that there are worthy watchdog topics in every newspaper’s back yard.

 

Republic sports columnist Scott Bordow suggested an examination of the the workings of high school athletics associations, much as he did along with fellow reporter Ronald Hansen this fall. Their stories revealed questionable financial practices by the Arizona Interscholastic Association in 2009 and 2010.

 

Bordow and Hansen, a reporter who covers public money and politics, teamed up to flesh out the reasons behind the AIA’s record spending in the face of the downturned economy.

 

The two spent nearly six months pouring over budgets and other public records before publishing the report. Both agreed that these types of stories are critical in keeping sports journalism relevant.

 

“Sports is just so big,” Hansen said. “It’s not enough to just write the scores. You have to look back at the macro picture.”

Added Bordow: “This is big business nowadays. And we need to be looking at it.”