Investigative business reporting

Chip Scanlan, the writing coach at the Poynter Institute, recently conducted an interview with investigations editor Mark Maremont of the Wall Street Journal about a front-page story he wrote on CEOs using corporate jets to go play golf in far-flung locations. It can be found here.

If you’re interested in executive compensation or how the best conduct their investigations, this gives a great rundown on Mark’s tactics, from how much time he spent reporting and how much time he spent writing to the online databases that helped him tell the story to the relationships with the companies and their CEOs that were featured in the story. I highly recommend it.

I learned a lot about writing and interviewing techniques from Chip Scanlan. I especially liked his last two questions to Mark.