IRE Conference a Young Journalist's Dream

Henrietta Cook won the coveted Young Journalist of the Year Award at this year's Quills. Her prize for winning the award was a trip to the United States to attend the Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference, an experience which has opened her eyes to new ways of being a journalist.

This was the sort of conference young journalists dream of. Around 850 investigative print, online, radio and broadcast reporters drifting in and out of seminars, frantically scrawling down notes, guzzling coffee and exchanging ideas and skills.

The 2011 Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference was held in Orlando, Florida, in a mammoth hotel with its own waterfall that backed onto Sea World. I have never seen such an impressive panel of speakers in my life. Conference attendees were spoilt for choice with up to 59 seminars taking each place each day. The seminars covered everything from tracking crime and corruption to exposing problems in the insurance industry and using the web as an investigative tool.

One of the highlights was a talk on uncovering hidden dangers in medical procedures, led by three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Bogdanich from the New York Times and Robin Fields from ProPublica. Bogdanich spoke about his Radiation Boom series, in which he exposed serious problems associated with radiation treatments. Stories in this series focused on problems ranging from the over radiation of premature babies in a Brooklyn hospital to patients who had CT scans and were left with large bands of hair missing. Fields discussed her 27-month battle to obtain public records for an investigative piece on the United States’ flawed dialysis care system. She used computer assisted reporting to compile an impressive geographically searchable database that allowed 400,000 American dialysis patients to compare treatments at different centres in their neighbourhood.

One of the things that struck me most about the conference was the role of non-profit journalism in the United States. Online newsrooms like ProPublica, which are funded entirely by philanthropists, partner with other media organisations to deliver hard-hitting investigative journalism. ProPublica offers a new model of journalism that is ideal for an environment where tight budgets and time restraints make it increasingly difficult for news organizations to employ designated investigative journalists.

Another highlight was listening to David Rohde and Rosario Mosso speak about the dangers of reporting and evaluating risk. Rohde is a New York Times reporter who was captured and held by the Taliban in Afghanistan for seven months in 2008. To improve his chances of survival, the New York Times went to great lengths to ensure news of his kidnapping never went public. This involved contacting competing media organisations and asking them to keep Rohde’s kidnapping out of the public domain. Persuading Wikipedia collaborators to withhold information about Rohde’s capture proved much more complicated.

This sense of sacrifice and the inherent dangers of the profession was echoed by Mexican journalist Rosario Mosso, who spoke about his experiences working for Zeta, an investigative weekly newspaper based in Tijuana that strives to reveal corruption at a state and local level and expose drug lords. It was shocking to hear Mosso recount stories of his colleagues being gunned down while on the job. It reinforced how lucky I am to work in a relatively stable and safe country where I don’t fear for my life every time I leave for work. I have such respect for journalists who risk their life for the job.

I was particularly impressed with the number of journalists who used interactive graphs and maps to accompany their stories. This enhances the reader’s understanding of a story, enabling them to relate to it in new ways. I attended a number of sessions on creating data-driven projects and illustrating stories with multimedia presentations. This is something I am keen to explore further. We also learnt how to background people online using websites on the visible and invisible web. These skills have already proved invaluable.

Going to the IRE Conference has opened my eyes to new ways of being a journalist and inspired me to dig deeper for stories. I know these skills will stay with me for a long time and I hope to attend the conference again one day.

Also on melbournepressclub.com

2010 Young Journalist of the Year Award winner: Read Henrietta Cook's winning story and what the judges said about it, and watch her acceptance speech at the 2010 Quill Awards.

From Young Journalist to Al-Jazeera: 2009 Young Journalist of the Year Drew Ambrose reflects on how winning the award boosted his career.

The Future of Investigative Journalism: Bill Birnbauer looks at some alternative models for investigative journalism.