Tap your audience as an

investigative partner
Presenters
Julie K. Brown
reporter, Miami Herald

David Fahrenthold
reporter, The Washington Post

Eric Umansky
deputy managing editor, ProPublica

Amy Pyle, moderator

national investigations editor, USA TODAY
Reaching out
...and getting results
Tailoring the ask to the audience
Incarcerated women shared their stories of abuse
Later led to other stories, like this...
...and this
Perversion of Justice
PBSOTALK.ORG, an anonymous Palm Beach cop blog
Asking for help
Asking readers for help works best when
you've already reached the limits of
traditional reporting, and narrowed the
task enough to be manageable
This...

led to this...
Giving readers a thread
to follow

In a fast-moving story, you can use

social media to keep readers current
– building an audience, and co-opting
new people to help.
Readers could follow the thread in real time,
while we finished the next story.
Showing your work
When I get a no-comment – or a non-response – I like to post the detailed questions
I asked, to show readers what's missing. This also invites them to fill in the blanks.
How the eff did our TurboTax coverage come about?

We did our first story six years ago. Then Justin heard that Congress was
about to bar the IRS from offering free, online filing.
And he got great tips, including about how TurboTax was tricking people.
So we did a callout – including in Spanish
We starting getting hundreds of responses from people who TurboTax
screwed and people inside the organization
https://www.propublica.org/article/here-are-your-stories-of-being-tricked-into-paying-by-turbotax-you-often-need-the-money
Which led us to more and more stories
We did fun stuff
...like getting the crowd into
boosting our SEO
Be useful!
Vetting and other pitfalls
...competing, getting bombarded, fake tweets
Real tweet

Fake tweet “Hi Alan, I know you’re probably

overwhelmed right now, but could you
please get us pictures or videos of the dead
bodies? @MiamiHerald, you can follow back
to DM”
Real tweet

Fake tweet “Hi Mads, I’m so sorry to hear that you and
your friends went through such a trauma. Did
you see the shooter? Was he white? If so, I’d
like to ask you questions for the
@MiamiHerald. Follow back if it’s OK to DM”
Contacts
Julie K. Brown
jbrown@miamiherald.com, @jkbjournalist

David Fahrenthold
David.Fahrenthold@washpost.com, @Fahrenthold

Eric Umansky
Eric.Umansky@propublica.org, @ericuman

Amy Pyle, moderator

apyle@usatoday.com, @amy_pyle