By NYU Staff

Coronel who currently heads the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism in Columbia University shared her global perspective on the challenges for investigative reporting in a transitioning media environment. Excerpts from her interview with New York University.

1.  How does investigative reporting in Asia differ from the West?

Investigative reporting is challenging all over the world. A lot of it is being done by newspapers or magazines or television stations in Asia. The only non-profit in that part of the world as far as I know is the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ). In Asia, the challenges are fewer resources for all reporting, but investigative reporting in particular. In the U.S. investigative reporting is still thriving in big newspapers, but not in small and medium-sized newspapers. Many journalists have been laid off and are looking for jobs in non-profit news organizations. The challenges in Asia are access to information, safety of journalists and openness of newspaper owners to do investigative stories that hold governments responsible.

A number of new laws for access to information have been legislated in Thailand, India and China. Despite these laws, information access is still difficult. There are also threats, harassment, and intimidation. But these have not muzzled investigative reporting. There is a community of investigative reporters in China, for example. There, you have newspapers and TV programs that have to survive commercially by getting advertisements, increasing circulation or viewership. The way they compete in a crowded market is by offering investigative stories. There is an audience for such news. Citizens want to know since China is undergoing such cataclysmic changes, people are concerned about health, environment and livelihoods and their businesses.

2. Which Asian country is atypical when it comes to press freedom?

Countries like Burma and North Korea are very difficult to report in. The Burmese junta monitors many even Internet use. Most of the real journalism on Burma is being done outside Burma, by Burmese or non-Burmese. North Korea does not even count.

Countries like India have a thriving media market and an emerging middle class that is hungry for news interested in current affairs. There is an investigative magazine like Tehelka, which is getting attention.

But certainly China has proved that investigative reporting can be commercially viable. There is a very successful magazine called Caijing that mainly does investigative financial reporting and has an audience. There is a 60 minutes-like program on CCTV and then you have bloggers. Inside China, many newspapers try to outwit the censors in getting the stories out before party officials issue directives that ban reporting on these topics. In fact there is a book that is coming out soon on investigative reporting in China – proving that there is enough of it going on to be written about it a book.

3. When do newspapers in a developing country cease to be under the control of the government or companies?

The situation in China is much more restrictive than in other countries. I think the question is not so much how much pressure the government exerts, but whether there is a community of journalists willing to test the limits and to take the risks. It is not that only media structures that define what is possible. There is an element of agency and voluntarism in all these. In China, you do have a number of journalists who are coming of age at a time when the social and political situation is very volatile. This is also a time when more Chinese are buying TVs, magazines and newspapers and a lot of advertisers are trying to reach out to these readers. I call it the hothouse effect. Orchids don’t bloom all the time, but there are conditions where orchids – independent, investigative reporting — bloom. And I think those conditions exist in China.

Even in the US, the surge of investigative reporting has tended to be episodic, so you had that the muckraking era in the early 1900s, where a combination of technological changes in the media including transport and communications, made it easier to distribute newspapers and magazines. There was popular questioning of what was going on. There was a popular movement for reforms. You had a community of journalists that exposed what was happening in factories, mental hospitals. They examined public records and experimented in undercover reporting. Some of the investigative techniques we used now were developed then. The tradition started there. Investigative energies are not consistent through time, there are moments in history where you see peaks of investigative energies and then these fall again.

3. Why isn’t there enough investigative reporting in Asia? What do you think will transform this?

Changes in media technology, changes in society cause people to question the existing order of things and demand more information. You also need a community of journalists able to take advantage of the situation and able to build an audience for muckraking reporting. That happened in Philippines, after the fall of the Marcos. Eventually investigative reporting became institutionalized. That’s what is happening to newspapers in Latin America. After democracy, journalists became powerful, more confident so that they could write on human rights and other abuses. In the US, if you think about it, there was not much investigative reporting from the muckraking era to the 1970s. The Vietnam War brought about disillusionment and questioning. It paved the way for Watergate. At that time, newspapers and TV stations took the lead in investigative reporting. A competitive press spurs investigative reporting. That is the case in China. In Philippines, there were dozens of newspapers that sprang out. In the 70s, in the US, it was competition between the newspapers and the TV stations that encouraged this form.

4. Does being an Asian make you better equipped to handle investigative reporting?

I think I am much more used to obstacles and difficulties. In Asia the right to information is so underdeveloped. There is of course a lot of more you can do if public records are made available to journalists. But that does not happen all the time, even here. My students are sometimes being denied information. I tell them how to assert their right and if that fails, to work around the constraints. Using techniques and technologies being used here can be applied to Asia as well.

5. With an audience that has access to scores of information sources, will investigative stories become less popular?

People want real stories beyond the headlines. They are interested in such things as harmful products, the environment, and water contamination: these and other issues concern readers and citizens.  People want to know about health, safety, how their future and their fortunes are affected by policies and decisions made by powerful institutions. These are issues that are not tackled in depth by daily news. There is also hidden information, information that is difficult to pull together and requires the investment and time of journalists. Investigative reporting provides a public service and should have an audience.

6. What are the lessons for entrepreneurs interested in setting up non-profit investigative centers?

One has to be adaptable. There is no one size fits all approach. Non-profit centers come in all sizes and shapes. You need to define your audience and to build it. You need to reach out to them, have a relationship with them, explain to them what motivates you, and what techniques you use to get information. Your work is defined by the interaction with your audience.

Your stories must also have direct relevance for the audience. You want people to talk about your reports. Your stories should create a buzz. Our most discussed stories were those that hit at the center of power and wealth in a country. But you can’t do that in the start. You have to build credibility. Any project requires passion and drive in order to succeed. It is not just a question of money.

Stories need to make an impact; otherwise these will lead to audience fatigue. If you expose corruption at very high levels, it is difficult to not have an impact.

Innovating is important. At PCIJ, we kept trying something new. We worked with newspapers, with TV channels and we went into book publishing and then we moved on to the web. We posted databases of assets of officials for example. We tried stuff on mobile phones, that didn’t work. Continuous experimentation is important.

7. But how does one make it commercially viable?

It is difficult to make it sustainable. I do not know of any investigative non-profit in the world that is financially sustainable. There are about 40 of them. These centers are dependent on funding from donors, whether from individual donors or groups or foundations. It is not the kind of work which can be sustained by revenues. But there are successful or commercial or for profit publications that do investigative reporting, like Caijing, for example. For a time, its ad revenues were going up 20% every year. 60 minutes remains profitable. There are other models. You can build an endowment for example, so that you don’t have to keep raising money. You can also have community support like NPR; others have a combination of sponsorships and donor funds.

8. Do you think venture capitalists may step in the future?

It may not be venture capitalists, but donors. Like Sandler funds Propublica. Maybe once you have figured out the business model for doing journalism online, maybe venture capitalists will come in. It’s quite possible, especially if you do financial investigative reporting like Caijing does, that you will have information to sell and you will get advertising that people want to sell to business executives who are the readers. There may be a market, especially in China where reliable information especially about businesses is difficult to come by. People are willing to pay a premium to get the inside information on companies.

9. What has been your experience at Columbia University?

Students are interested in investigative reporting. I am not worried that not enough people are going into this kind of reporting. There are just not enough opportunities for them to do so. The ones who get jobs are the ones who are being hired by non-profits. I hope these organizations proliferate and hire more students!

10. In all your years of reporting who was more difficult to tackle government or companies?

The governments are really powerful. They could really intimidate and harass you. Companies can use sophisticated public relations machinery or pay off journalists. They do not usually intimidate the press because they will appear very bad. In Philippines, there is the problem of local bosses, some of whom have ordered the killing of journalists. They are like gang lords or local officials who have private armies. In Indonesia, a businessman sued this investigative magazine. It differs country to country.

11. Have journalists become more cynical?

There is a new generation of journalists keen in investigative reporting. The whole romance about investigative reporting is not over yet despite the transition in the media. Journalists are finding new ways of doing it in an environment that is increasingly hospitable to this kind of work. I think there are a lot of energies and brainpower being poured into ensuring that investigative reporting survives. There is a lot of foundation support coming in as well.

12. Is the media as powerful as before? What is your sense of how people in governments and corporations perceive the media?

You have a situation where the big powerful institutions are losing audience and money. For example if New York Times loses its circulation by half, I don’t know whether that will happen, but if it does, it will no longer be as rich and powerful. Part of the power of the press stems from the big institutions and their clout. It was the newspapers here that fought for the Freedom of Information Act in the 1960s, when the power of the press was at its peak. But then we live in an age where media is much more ubiquitous. So the power may no longer be in big institutions but it is more diffused, resting in a bigger ecosystem. It will be powerful as ‘media’ broadly but individual organizations may no longer be as powerful.

13. How do you mentor PCIJ now?

I am still on the board. There is a new leadership.  You can’t watch over people’s shoulders. I don’t try to run it, if I am asked help, I give it. There has to be new blood, new ways of doing things.  It’s the way of nature, renewal. Even in companies, you cannot stay in a leadership position forever. You need to give way to the next generation.