Charles Lewis, who founded the Center for Public Integrity, is launching the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University’s School of Communication and explains to PBS’s Marc Glaser how Children’s Television Workshop (Big Bird’s Baby Mama) inspired the idea for the workship — which “will include ‘all-stars’ of the investigative journalism world, undergraduate and grad students at SOC , as well as faculty at the school — all working on important long-term investigative stories while also testing out new methods and technologies for doing their work.”

Of The State of Journalism Lewis notes that it “sometimes feels like there’s a piano coming down on [journalists’] heads,” but proclaims himself a “a doer” “not a bemoaner.” He does, however, share a gripe or two. Such as:

We still have Scott McClellan’s book ending up on page A19 of the New York Times. The idea of a press secretary to the president of the United States dissing his president about a war and his truthfulness was not deemed important enough for page 1 of the New York Times… That is beyond ridiculous but it is also not surprising.