Journalism professor Dick Lehr overturned a wrongful murder conviction in 2003 through his investigative reporting efforts. Just six years later, he said a lack in newspaper funding has made investigative reporting a concept of the past.
‘I’ve been around a little while, and I remember when the Globe, the Herald and television stations, they had these muscular investigative abilities to keep people in power in check,’ Lehr, a former reporter for the Pulitzer- Prize winning Boston Globe Spotlight Team, said. ‘That’s not happening today.’
The journalists behind the recently opened New England Center for Investigative Reporting at Boston University are working to fill the growing void in local and regional investigative reporting, College of Communication Dean Tom Fiedler said.
NECIR-BU, which opened on Jan. 15, is the first nonprofit, university-based investigative center in the nation that is directing its efforts toward local and regional issues.
‘As we talked more about it [the Center], we came to realize that what we really wanted to do . . . would be investigative reporting projects that would impact communities here and would also slow this growing and frightening shortage of investigative reporting that’s being brought about by the financial problems that the media is increasingly struggling with and collapsing under,’ Fiedler said.
At the local and regional levels, investigative reporting is dwindling because of a lack of resources, NECIR-BU Director Joe Bergantino said.
‘There’s a widening gap that needs to be filled in cities and regions around the country, to make sure that citizens who live in those areas get the investigative reporting they deserve,’ Bergantino, a former WBZ-TV Investigative Unit reporter, said.
Journalists at the center will work to produce in-depth investigative reporting in conjunction with its media partners the Boston Globe, New England Cable News, WBUR and New England Ethnic News.
The media partners will be involved in every step of the process, but Bergantino and Maggie Mulvihill, the NECIR-BU Associate Director and former Boston Herald investigative editor, will do the majority of the reporting.
The different media partners will meet with the NECIR-BU journalists to discuss story possibilities and use the center as an extra aid for completing the investigation, Fiedler said.
COM students will also have the opportunity to work on investigative pieces through Lehr’s investigative reporting class, which he teaches with BU journalism professor Mitchell Zuckoff.
Some students will work directly under Bergantino and Mulvihill on projects, but some projects may develop in class and be published through the center’s various media outlets, Lehr, who is on the center’s advisory board, said.
‘It’s a great opportunity for us in terms of being able to expand the work we’ve been doing in the clinic, which has been a one-semester course offering,’ Lehr said. ‘But now, with the center, we can become even better and have a broader reach.’
NECIR-BU will operate year-round, creating more opportunities for journalism students to get experience with investigative reporting through summer internships and fall semester independent studies, Lehr said.
‘The center seems like the perfect place to really actively explore investigative reporting,’ COM freshman Sara Keimig said. ‘I think it’s a great opportunity to learn.’
The center will also bring in two Boston high school students each semester to work as interns.
‘We want to help acquaint students with the role that investigative reporting plays in our society, to get them excited about journalism and also to have them as resources for story ideas,’ Bergantino said.
Although the NECIR-BU is just getting off of the ground, Bergantino said he foresees NECIR-BU broadening its media partnerships into New Hampshire, as well as other states in New England and perhaps to other universities, Bergantino said.
Fiedler said he agreed that as the NECIR-BU develops, expansion is an option.
‘We are conscious of calling it the New England Center rather than the Boston Center because we do think that a lot of the media outside of the Boston area are in real need of the kind of expertise that we can provide,’ said Fiedler. ‘We don’t want to be limited by having called ourselves something that would war against that mission.’
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