Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s
Research Guide was co-written by four award-winning journalists
who also teach journalism. Between reporting and teaching, clearly
they grasped how insufficient American investigative reporting guides
are for students north of the 49th Parallel. Digging Deeper is the
first and only investigative reporting guide written with Canadian
systems, policies and infrastructure in mind. That alone should
guarantee its success across the country, but it’s not just
the only Canadian investigative guide -- it’s also a very
good one.
Authors Cribb, Jobb, McKie and Vallance-Jones touch on all the bases
for good reporting in the first half of the text, then they shift
their focus in the second half to the very specific tools and techniques
that will help journalists break through bureaucratic barriers and
organizational holdups.
The general information -- including a review of different primary
and secondary sources and a summary of “twelve keys,”
like tenacity, skepticism, and curiosity, to give a journalist the
mentality for success -- resembled many how-to journalism texts
that preceded Digging Deeper. While law, interviewing techniques
and information gathering are necessary elements to any report (and
hence any reporting text), the information is sometimes too general
to be valuable and too cursory to be informative. ‘Public
records,’ for example, occupies almost 30 pages, but it needs
triple that space to actually address the dozens of types of records
mentioned and URLs listed. Young B.C. journalists scrolling through
web address lists might be disappointed to learn that BC Online,
listed as a great resource for land titles, is a pricey, subscription-only
tool. And reporters looking for in-depth information about labour
disputes will find that Ontario’s Ministry of Labour offers
frequent online updates, whereas B.C.’s Labour Ministry only
posts about one report a year. Digging Deeper’s authors all
live and work east of the Canadian Rockies, and their oversight
of B.C.-oriented issues is notable.
The media law section also suffers from a wealth of information
condensed into a recap. The reader is introduced to the justice
system, not shown how to approach it. The chapter’s concluding
anecdote is a microcosm of the chapter itself, rehashing a 1992
Montreal Gazette story on judicial scandal without mentioning how
the investigation was accomplished.
A research guide can only be so long, though, and elaborating on
courts and records could easily have spun the compact 260-page book
into a 1000-page tome.
Digging Deeper really shines when it moves away from the basics
of good reporting and hones in on specific techniques. The text’s
coverage of Freedom of Information, Computer-Assisted Reporting,
and financial reporting make it truly invaluable.
Aptly, the authors note that journalists shy away from numbers.
Then, they take the reader step by step through sample finance reports,
excel spreadsheets and database managers, highlighting the most
vital tools and info that each provides. The text offers tips, including
what numbers should catch a journalist’s eye on a 10-K and
what steps are necessary to sort spreadsheet data into chronological
order.
The FOI section provides clear and encompassing guidance for facing
reticent Information Officers who use fees and delays to waylay
an information request. Digging Deeper’s links to sites like
CAIRS -- for past Access to Information requests -- and provincial
and federal ATI sites also make the FOI process more accessible
to starting journalists.
Probably the most useful section of the book begins after the text
ends. Appendices A, B, and C are guides to spreadsheets, databases
and financial information, respectively. With bullet points, diagrams,
and web links, book lays plain all the basics of three extremely
valuable, rarely used tools that new journalists should embrace.
The explanations are so methodical that following them is astoundingly
easy.
A guide to Canadian investigative reporting and researching has
been much-needed for years now, and Digging Deeper fills the void
extremely well.
Robert Cribb is an award-winning investigative reporter
at the Toronto Star. He teaches investigative journalism at Ryerson
University.
Dean Jobb, a former reporter,
editor, and columnist with the Halifax Herald, deaches investigative
reporting and editing at the University of King’s College
School of Journalism in Halifax.
David McKie is an award-winning
journalist with CBC News Investigative Unit. He is a specialist
in computer-assisted reporting and teaches investigative journalism
at Carleton University’s School of Journalism
Fred Vallance-Jones, one of
the country’s foremost expoerts on CAR and an award-winning
special reports writer with The Hamilton Spectator, teaches at the
Ryerson School of Journalism
