From the workshop to the real world: teaching investigative journalism
One way to measure the success of any university program is to look at the real world output of the students.When it comes to investigative journalism, the students at King’s College in Halifax deserve high marks.
Teaching students the fundamentals of investigative journalism is important, but putting
those principles into practice is the real test of an educational program.
The journalism school at King’s College in Halifax gets full marks on this front.
Over the years, students have produced some impressive examples of
investigative work. This year the school was honoured with an award at the
annual Canadian Association of Journalists conference.
Students
looked into Nova Scotia’s gaming strategy and found that people continue to be
driven to financial ruin and addiction by VLT’s, despite government promises to
address the problem. The investigation found that half the VLT losses come
from people with gambling problems. Since the machines were introduced to the
province, problem gamblers have lost more than $1 billion.
Part of the series looked at the gambling profits garnered by First Nations
communities. While gambling has brought economic gains for the Membertou and
Millbrook First Nations, the stories showed that gambling addictions occur five
times as often on reserves as in other communities.
The
series was published by the school on its own website, and was also featured in
The Coast under the title Terminal Disease.
King’s
investigative workshop is guided by assistant professor Fred Vallance-Jones,
who has extensive experience in both broadcast and print journalism. Other
investigations he has overseen at King’s include an examination of a pulp
mill’s toxic legacy, and a computer-assisted look at Halifax police response
calls.
The
success at creating investigative projects may be one reason King’s College, in
conjunction with Dalhousie University, is offering a new Master’s program in
journalism that allows for a specialization in investigative work. The 10-month
program allows students to choose either an investigative reporting stream, or
a “new ventures” stream that will focus on freelancing or new journalistic enterprises.
The
investigative stream provides in-depth instruction in public records analysis.
It also focuses on data visualization, geocoding and specialized interviewing.
A substantial part of the program involves a professional investigative
reporting project.
Recognizing
the need for students to be multi-skilled, both streams will include training
in multimedia reporting skills.
For anyone interested in the future of investigative
journalism in Canada, it’s exciting to see a university offer a specialized
course of instruction in the field. And it’s an added bonus that the university
already has a track record of guiding students to create meaningful
investigative work.
