Journo in Context

Week Two discussion

Hopefully you all have your blogs up and running by now.

This week we are going to look at two pieces of investigative journalism.

The first piece is by an American freelance feature write named Paige Williams. Her story sought to use statistical information to paint a picture of poverty in Georgia, USA.

The second piece is by Nick McKenzie, an investigative reporter with The Age in Melbourne.

Given that in week three we will start to think about how we investigate a news story, I want you to respond to the forms of investigation in these two pieces of writing.

Think about the background investigation for these stories:

1. What sources of information are the journalists relying on to write their story

2. If you were writing a similar story, where would you find information of this sort?

3. What sort of role does the investigation play in actually telling the story?

4. What do you think? Of the investigation done and how the story itself was presented. Is this how you would have written or investigated these stories?