Case Studies and Investigative Journalism

Two case studies I examined were about reporters and problems they encountered.  The first dealt with a reporter, who covered his beat report heavily, being torn on whether or not to report a negative story about a police story shooting himself in the foot during a demonstration.  If he does report the story, he will lose his sources in his beat, but if he does not report the story, he is not fulfilling his duty the public.  The second case study concerned a reporter who had to compete with government officials to get the correct public documents about a potential scandal by a mayor.  The officials made it tough for her to get the documents, making the reporter suspicious of a cover up. 

The criteria for an investigative story is not explicitly stated, but the book "Investigative Journalism" by William Gaines says that most have similar qualities.  The stories reveal information that someone is trying to hide or that otherwise would not have been known, are a matter of importance to the public well-being, are the work product of the reporter rather than a leak from a government agency investigation, or expose a waste of tax money caused by mismanagement or corruption in government, dangerous conditions posing safety hazards or fraudulent conduct in the private sector that preys on the consumer.

I examined an investigative article in the LA Times about the process of removing a teacher from the education system in California.  "Failure Gets a Pass: Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task," was written by Jason Song and published in the paper May 3, 2009.  The story is investigative because it took a situation and turned it into a broader look of how hard it is to fire tenured teachers. It reveals the information about every case on record in the last 15 years in which a tenured teacher was fired by a California school district and formally contested the decision before a review commission.  The Los Angeles Times also examined court and school district records and interviewed scores of people, including principals, teachers, union officials, district administrators, parents and students. The fact that so many people are involved in this matter, shows the importance to the public's well-being.  This story was the work of a reporter, not a leak from a government agency investigation.  A story about an escapee from a county jail being apprehended by police officers is not an investigative story because there is not much extended research. 

A good investigative story gives the target of the investigation a fair opportunity to state what happened, but the story I analyzed did not.  There was no statement from an official about why it takes so long for the removal process.  The documents Song did use were 15 years worth of court cases in California. 

There are a few visuals that accompany the article.  One is a graphic shows the actual process for firing a teacher after a misconduct complaint.  The graphic strongly resembles a children’s maze, looking impossible to get from start to finish in any reasonable time.  One photo is of an associate general counsel for L.A. Unified and a Trustee with an example of the volume of legal documentation sometimes needed to dismiss a tenured teacher.  The third picture is a simple visual of a teacher in a dark classroom to give the reader a little more of an emotional connection to the story. 

This article would be most interesting to parents with students passing through the California education system that have to put up with these tenured teachers.  Students and school administrators in California will also be concerned about the issue and all will be affected by the story and may feel compelled to try to take action in streamlining the firing process. 

The headline of the article seems fairly harsh, using the word “tortuous”, but after reading the story, it seems that these students that have to put up with the teachers are tortured because they are not receiving quality education at vital times in the learning process. 

As for where the information in the story was found, the reporter extended a story about a boy who slit his wrists, attempting to kill himself, returned to school only to have a teacher tell him that the cuts were weak and to cut deeper next time. The reporter investigated the process of how hard it would be to have this teacher removed from the school system, finding that many cases of appealed dismissals are overturned and administrators are far less likely even to try firing a tenured teacher.