Ten years of Transforming Students into Sleuths

What does it take for an Investigative Journalism Course to be truly successful? How can we measure such success?

Ten years ago, I initiated the first investigative journalism workshop at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile , a university that holds the second position in Latin America. However, its journalism school, where I pursued my studies, did not offer such a course until I created it and started teaching it in 2014. Since then, the outcomes of this hands-on class have been remarkably promising.

Over the course of 15 weeks, students generate stories that contribute to democracy, uncover failures in public policies, and delve not just into the what but also the why behind events that affect citizens.

It's not just a figure of speech. To be clear, undergraduate students have uncovered instances where women with mental disabilities were being forcibly sterilized in public hospitals, female soldiers who spoke out about sexual abuse were being punished by the army, and government officials were illegally purchasing indigenous land. They have also unearthed that employees of high-complexity hospitals were prioritizing the care of their acquaintances or relatives, disregarding the risk to other patients' lives, as well as instances of misuse of public funds and many other relevant but overlooked topics.

Over the years, students have consistently earned several awards, and I myself was given the Award for Excellence in Teaching at Universidad Católica, recognized among 3,600 professors for my innovative teaching method and the inspiring, empowering connection I established with my students.

However, all of those accolades should be seen as secondary. What is most relevant is that students have systematically contributed to democracy by producing high-quality journalism, and I consider that to be the true success of this workshop.

Following this teaching methodology ensures that they will produce relevant stories, beyond relying solely on their personal skills or sources. This also democratizes investigative journalism and expands its potential to scrutinize the wrongdoings of people in power.

So how did it all start, and what is the teaching method all about?

The genesis of this initiative dates back to my first day at Ciper, the Chilean center for investigative journalism, a non-profit online media outlet renowned for its #muckraking endeavors in the country. Although I had prior experience in investigative television programming and international studies, I found myself facing a task for which I felt utterly unprepared.

"I want you to cover La Polar," my then-boss instructed, referring to a financial scandal that had been under scrutiny for nearly a year. In this scandal, the financial arm of a retail store, La Polar, deceived the market by presenting false results. The strategy was straightforward: they unilaterally renegotiated the debts of numerous defaulting clients to portray them as reprogrammed assets, instead of recognizing these bad debts as losses and provisioning for them accordingly. This manipulation increased the price of its stocks in the market until the fraud was revealed, causing the company's value to plummet and resulting in massive losses for investors and pension funds that had invested in stocks and debt in the company.

I didn't know much about that, of course. To be honest, I barely understood how the stock market worked. So, that day I asked, naively, "What exactly would you like me to cover regarding La Polar?" The reply was clear: "You tell me; you are the reporter." Panic surged within me; I truly wanted that job, but I had never investigated financial fraud and lacked any sources. "I'll do some reading and return with a story," I said, pretending all was cool.

But how do you uncover a story like that without any human sources? How do you start investigating an unfamiliar, complex system? How do you unearth a scoop without whistleblowers, and how do you track the money trail?

I was forced to change my mindset. Instead of pondering who could inform me about what had occurred, I had to consider which documents contained traces of the story and what open sources I could access. To cut a long story short(ish), I published a series of articles uncovering how the top executives had participated in the fraud. When the stories earned recognition with a financial journalism award it struck me: if I could achieve this, anyone could, simply by following a methodology of open sources.

So I reflected on what I had done and I systematized those steps into a methodology of learning by doing, based on open sources and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Global Investigative Journalism Network published an article in 2019 about it, after I presented the methodology at the Global Conference of Investigative Journalism in Hamburg. You can check it out here, brilliantly written by Megan Clement : https://gijn.org/stories/heres-how-to-turn-students-into-sleuths-in-15-weeks/.

Now, it's been ten years since four students opted to take the elective course at that time. Although it began as an experiment, through trial and error, I refined the course, which surprisingly doubled its enrollment immediately. It was evident that despite the demanding workload, students appreciated it. I continued to enhance the teaching methodology, and by the third semester, I had reached maximum enrollment and had to request another professor to teach alongside me. Soon, the course gained popularity and recognition, prompting the Faculty to make it a compulsory course in the final semester of the journalism curriculum.?

Currently, five professors at Universidad Católica are teaching the course, employing the same methodology, ensuring that students graduate with a clear understanding of how to effectively report on corruption or conflicts of interest and analyze the underlying reasons behind events. In essence, through the course, they transition from being undergraduate students to proficient sleuths.

If you teach investigative journalism and are interested in discussing this methodology, please do not hesitate to contact me. I would love to collaborate and share in detail the knowledge that my students have generously provided me through our collective efforts.