Chapter 5 – The Game Plan

After you find your story idea, you need an action plan to develop the story. A good organizational system is essential to the success of an investigative project. You will learn to use a step-bystep methodology for your investigative project. An investigation can be a big story and can take time to develop, so that even with a methodology to keep you focused, you will need guidelines for keeping an investigative story manageable. Finally, you will learn how to visualize your story.

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Exercises

Look for a premise in a professional story and try out a mock game plan

  1. Go to the Extra!Extra! section of the ire.org Web site. Select an investigative story to read. What do you think was the premise the reporters started with? How did they test it? What data did they analyze?
  2. Imagine that you are going to replicate that investigation. Develop a game plan for it and write up a preliminary To Do list. Set your parameters: What is the most you might be able to accomplish, and what is the minimum you could base a story on?

Big Story Steps

Determining the do-ability of a project and listing possible interviewees

  1. 5.1 Considering what you learned from your preliminary research, assess the doability of your proposed project.
    1. What key pieces of information will you need, where can you get them, how difficult will they be to obtain and how long will that take?
    2. Who are the people who are essential to the story, and will you have access to them?
    3. Will you need to travel far to get information?
    4. Will you need to grant anonymity, and will that affect whether you can get the story published?
    5. Do you have the nerve to ask difficult questions?
    6. Is it necessary to pore through reams of reports, and do you have the time and patience to do that?
    7. Will you be able to analyze the data, or will you need to seek help from experts such as the people at the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting?
    8. Will the story depend on your getting secret information?
  2. 5.2 If the answers to these questions lead you to believe that the story is not doable as you proposed, try to alter the premise in such a way as to avoid the problems and still turn out a good story.
  3. 5.3 Determine the maximum you think you can accomplish with your project and come up with a minimum you can produce that will still result in an informative article.
  4. 5.4 From your preliminary research and interviews map out a detailed list of people to interview according to this formula:
    1. People affected by the problem you are investigating
    2. The people responsible
    3. Any policy makers who have the authority to change the situation
    4. Independent experts who can help you explain the problem
    5. People who will be able to fill in holes after you have done significant amount of reporting
  5. 5.5 Create a To Do list. If the investigation is a team effort, post the To Do list on a wiki. Include all the things you think you will need to get to prove your premise and make your story compelling: background research, people to interview, data to get, history to track down, observations to make, meetings or events to attend and experts to find.
  6. 5.6 Create a Master Sourcelist spreadsheet. If your investigation is a group project, designate a place where all team members will store a copy of any information they gather; it could be a particular computer or a wiki stored on the Internet. Store the Master Sourcelist there as well to keep track of all information collected for the project. Everytime someone adds a listing to the Master Sourcelist, turn it into a hyperlink to the source of information.