Your ELi: When (and Why) We do Investigative Stories

ELi Managing Editor Ann Nichols asked me to pause on what I’m working on (prepping for a Board meeting; prepping to convene a Community Advisory Board meeting; writing our monthly report for you about what we did and what it cost; creating a giant FAQ on the income tax proposal; thanking last month’s donors) to address some readers’ concerns about our recent report on the Cole Academy set to open soon in East Lansing.

The concerns expressed mirror state-wide and national concerns about charter schools, including with regard to student academic success (real versus reported) and taking funds away from public schools. A few readers have suggested that by providing a straight-ahead report about the East Lansing Cole Academy school opening, we failed in our duty as your public service news organization.

ELi exists to serve this community, so we always take concerns and criticisms seriously. There certainly have been instances when we have localized national stories. The example that springs to mind—probably because I reported it—is when leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement suggested citizens ask questions of their own police forces with regard to anti-bias training, de-escalation techniques, and more. In response, I interviewed our police chief about this and brought his responses to our readers.

But Ann didn’t assign the Cole opening story to our reporter, Jessy Gregg, because we wanted to localize a national story. She assigned it because having a new school open in our city is important news. (When the new daycare at the Bailey Center opens, we will definitely be reporting that.)

Yes, ELi’s news report on the East Lansing Cole Academy might have mentioned the public debates about charter schools. But we don’t mention debates about public schools versus charter schools when we do straight-ahead reporting on activities in our public schools, such as Karessa Wheeler’s recent report on the Intercultural Dialogue projects or Ann Kammerer’s recent report on the end of Officer Steve Whelan’s time as ELPS’s Schools Resource Officer.

In both of those stories about ELPS, we might have asked the reporters to relay related controversies. There are definitely critics of the Intercultural Dialogue, including some ELPS parents and students, and the issue of the ELPD budget cuts might well have become a focus of the story on Officer Whelan. But in these cases, Ann assigned straight-ahead news reports.

As Publisher, I believe Ann’s calls on these story assignments are right on. (I am probably her biggest fan because I get to see, every day, how she manages news for this community.) Sometimes being a nonpartisan news organization doesn’t mean trying to get “all sides” of a given story; it means telling a story straight without pulling in associated controversies. Take for example my recent report on the Center City District celebration.

These are editorial decisions that take into account values like nonpartisanship (meaning not taking a side on campaigns or controversial issues), fairness, accuracy, and also resource management. We have limited time and money to spend on bringing East Lansing the news, and sometimes that means having reporters do straight-ahead stories where someone wishes we had done a longer, more complex report.

At ELi, we do investigative reporting sometimes. This is a special kind of reporting that takes a lot more time and skill—along with alligator skin—so only a few of us take it on. We tend to focus our investigative resources where our readers want us to: city government. (People tend to care about taxes and laws, understandably.)

We’ve done very little investigative reporting about our schools—almost none, in fact. To be honest, we’d love to have the resources to do that. There are three stories I could name off the top of my head that involve ELPS that I wish we had the resources to investigate. If we obtain more funding and can hire a reporter to do that work, we will do investigative schools reporting (not confined to ELPS by any means).

It’s also worth noting, as we have in the past, that what you see published at ELi is the tip of the iceberg of our work. There is a lot of investigative work (plus management, and editing) you never see, because it doesn’t result in something worth reporting or because it’s a smaller part of a larger story, and we can’t expect you to read thousands and thousands of words on a single subject.

As I write, I’m getting ready to go to a public hearing at the Department of Public Works about a sewer project. I have no idea whether there’s a story there. What I know is that I’ve never before seen a public hearing happen at DPW, and that makes me curious. (Apparently I just missed the notices, which for some reason aren’t posted on the City’s public hearings page?)

Maybe it’ll lead to something, but probably not. That’s part of what we do at ELi, is to keep looking for things we might be missing that people would want to know about.

We exist to serve the community as its nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization. We don’t exist to reify your political beliefs, or to change them. We don’t exist to represent the majority viewpoint or to create “false balance.”

We know we won’t always make you happy—if we did, we’d be partisan. Sometimes our reporting makes us uncomfortable. But that’s part of doing the job of bringing you the news.

We appreciate your feedback, your tips, your ideas, and your support. Keep it all coming.