“Local health officials screened neighborhood children for lead,” the news outlet reported in February. “And regulators strengthened oversight of Gopher’s air pollution by adding random testing to monitor the company’s emissions. A former worker sued the company on behalf of his lead-poisoned child. Nationally, public health officials cited the Times series to push for changes in federal rules that would better protect thousands of workers from the dangers of lead poisoning.”
Projects such as this one are a mammoth undertaking, considering the amount of time, resources and skill that go into it. We asked members of the reporting team what they think made their series so successful. Here are five of the biggest reasons:
They read all they could find about the company and its factory, including the laws and regulations governing them.
Private companies often aren’t required to share their records and other information with the public or regulators. To learn how a particular business operates and better understand its history, Johnson says it’s crucial for journalists to read all they can find in public documents, including federal and local laws and regulations outlining what companies can and cannot do and are required to do.
He says one sentence in a lengthy federal report from the Environmental Protection Agency helped him track down the name of the company that owned the Tampa factory mentioned in the state health report that spurred the Times’ investigation. Reading federal laws governing companies like Gopher Resource helped the Times devise strategies for obtaining records detailing what was going on inside the plant.
The three journalists asked workers to share copies of their personal medical records and some did. After realizing federal law gives employees access to the factory’s confidential reports on air-lead concentrations, the journalists asked for copies. Dozens of workers from different regions of the plant shared the details they obtained.
Johnson says he lives by the wisdom passed down from veteran journalists Seymour Hersh and I.F. Stone.
“Like the great Seymour Hersh said that he had learned from I.F. Stone: you read before you write,” Johnson says. “Sometimes, stories are weak because the person hasn’t truly read all of what was out there to read in the government reports and things of that nature. I bring that up because investigating a private company, on its face, was daunting. But because we read widely and took the time to read the rules, to read the laws, we found workarounds. We found areas where the walls could be cracked.”
Tedious as it might seem, journalists covering a story like this one must read and reread the rules and regulations governing various aspects of the industry, including how factories must monitor air quality and employee health and safety, Murray says.
“As you start doing more reporting and the pieces fall into place, the rules become increasingly more meaningful,” he says. “You’ll see new things you missed early on. I would suggest to anyone: Get familiar with the rules and get comfortable with them.”
Journalists should keep in mind that “there’s no such thing as a truly hidden problem,” Johnson notes. People usually talk about or write down things they have witnessed, especially if they are harmful, he says. Sometimes, they capture events and information in photos and video recordings.
“It’s just sometimes the dots aren’t connected and because they’re not connected, you’re not seeing it,” he says. “There’s a bigger iceberg behind that little bitty tip that you see.”
Members of the reporting team had complementary skill sets, which made dividing the workload easier.
Johnson, Woolington and Murray worked together on all parts of the series. But they each took the lead on certain aspects of the investigation, based on their talents and skill sets.
“Corey is phenomenal at sourcing and focused mainly on worker interviews and gathering their records, and Eli is an incredible data reporter, who focused on conducting foundational analyses for us on exposure and worker blood-lead levels,” Woolington wrote by email. “I was tasked with serving what we call an anchor role, where I took information that was coming in from worker interviews and data analyses, organized and synthesized it (with loads of involvement from and discussions with Corey and Eli), and then wrote the stories.”
Woolington also consulted with industry and academic experts.
“I created chronologies for each worker, so I could track their health over time and compared their blood lead levels to those associated with health problems in the medical literature,” she wrote. “In talking to one expert, I learned how to estimate the amount of lead in workers’ bones and completed the analysis for one longtime worker, who died of heart and kidney disease at 56. Connecting workers’ chemical exposure to tangible harm was something we all talked a lot about during the reporting process and prioritized at each step.”
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