Categories: OLD Media Moves

How a non-profit journalism website investigates companies

Katrina Brooker of LinkedIn interviewed Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation founder Roddy Boyd about his work digging into companies and finding stories.

Here is an excerpt:

Do you really consider yourself the only reporter doing financial fraud investigations? 

There is not really anybody else dedicated to investigating all corporate, all financial fraud journalistically as a living — on the not-for-profit side. Some others dip into it from time to time but I don’t really see anyone else is doing it full time. 

Once a year there is company that steps into a bear trap. They get into trouble and it becomes open season on them. I am not talking about that company. I mean going after a large name that is not already in trouble. 

A lot of people will do a  “There could be trouble…”  types of pieces. Or people are willing to write about smoldering embers after a business crashes. There are so few journalists out there that are really going to write anything painful to a company that is an ongoing business — before the lawsuit hits or before the real trouble starts. 

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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