Think Web Presentations for Business Investigations

By Alec Klein
April 9, 2008 05:50 PM

So there I was, standing in a Navy blue suit in the middle of the desert. But it wasn’t the suit that was so out of place, even if I was frying to a fine crisp under the throttling sun. No, what was so odd—so absolutely bizarre—was that I was saddled down with a camcorder in a satchel slung over my shoulder and a digital camera clipped to my belt.

How did this happen?

I’m a Washington Post investigative business reporter of that old-style form of journalism: print. And for nearly twenty years, all I’ve ever needed when I’ve roamed out into the field to report were pens and a pad, a slight technological improvement over chisels and a tablet. OK, maybe I’d use a tape recorder, too. But that’s all. That is, until now.

Which brings me back to the desert, near the Mexican border, where I was interviewing soldiers, practicing maneuvers in tanks, about the costliest Army weapons program ever, the subject of my latest reporting project, called Future Combat, for The Washington Post.

From the beginning, it was clear to me that I would need the aid of the Web to explain this futuristic military program—at about $200 billion, Future Combat is considered the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II; after all, the military is developing a new generation of systems that does not yet exist: 14 weapons, drones, robots, combat vehicles and sensors—all connected to a wireless network. Imagine, for instance, a small drone hovering between buildings, detecting a hidden enemy, then relaying that information to nearby soldiers who use a computer to launch a missile that can automatically change direction in midair and hit a moving target about 24 miles away.

I was thinking, I needed audio and visuals to tell this story.

In some journalistic circles, that’s a heretical statement. Even now, more than a decade after the emergence of the Internet, some bricks-and-mortar journalists bristle at the notion that they must incorporate the Web in their print reporting. The thinking goes, the Web gets in the way of the words. Now, I’d be the first to come to the aid of my words—cherished friends, loved children all of them—and yet I cannot deny the value of the Web in aiding the basic job of a reporter, print or online, business or feature, investigative or general assignment—and that is, to tell a story well. That hasn’t changed.

What has changed is, I don’t just take digital pictures of my baby girl, Ryan, looking wide-eyed at Dada; I take photos of grizzled commanders peering into the desert-scape. I take video of generals discussing ways to combat the latest threat to national security. Heck, I even take b-roll, background footage to accompany the main video piece. I never thought I’d utter such a film phrase.

This is not to say that I am now also a photographer—far from it; in many cases, I use the digital photos not for publication but to help me as a second set of eyes in my reporting. Indeed, a photographer accompanied me on my excursion to the desert to capture the Army in action.

As an investigative business reporter, I still firmly believe in the power of the printed word. But I have little doubt that the first Post story on Future Combat was a textbook example of how to incorporate new media into old. The first important decision was to think about how to use the Web at the beginning of the reporting process—and to include the Web folks in that process, including the meetings at the story’s inception so that ideas could percolate and help guide the reporting.

The result: My first piece on Future Combat, which ran in December, included a video interview of a key general, a timeline of the military program, a Web chat and an interactive graphic that explained—in words, visual scenarios and video—the 14 components of the Army weapons program.

 It’s important to remember that as print reporters, we are only one element of a broad array of people who need to get involved to make new media work well with old. That’s especially true of investigative reporting. As with every project I do, this story involved the good work of several other people at The Washington Post, including my print editors as well as the Web team: interactive design by Adam Kipple, graphics by Andrea Caumont and Todd Lindeman, video by Pierre Kattar, video editing by Jonathan Forsythe and Web editing by Alicia Cypress.

One of the beauties of the Web is, well, space. At washingtonpost.com, developers created a special place—a repository of sorts—to keep the stories and online elements of my project.

When I finished my second story about the Army weapons program, which ran in January, we simply added the new components to the online site, including a new video interview with another general, another online graphic and—of course—an electronic version of the part that still counts the most, the printed story.

Alec Klein is a bestselling author and an award-winning investigative business reporter at The Washington Post.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism