On March 12 and 13, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism hosted Enlarging the Space for Watchdog Journalism, a conference focused on the state and future of investigative journalism.
Mark Horvitt, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Paul Steiger of ProPublica, and Cheryl Phillips, data enterprise editor of the Seattle Times, shared the stage at the Economic and Commercial Threats panel, speaking about the shrinking resources available to investigative projects. Later, Ying Chan, founding director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at University of Hong Kong, delivered an overview of China’s best watchdog journalism. The next day, Mark Katches, investigative editor at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and WNYC’s Brian Lehrer discussed whether crowd-sourcing could bolster investigative projects as resources are cut.
Other panels covered topics like the challenges to investigative reporting in today’s market, innovations on funding models for investigative reporting, and new ways of providing legal protection for investigative journalists. The full audio from the conference is available here. A complete blog of the conference’s proceedings is available at watchdogconference.com.
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.