The Shipbreakers

Anatomy of an investigative story

Learn the fundamentals of reporting and writing – and you can do groundbreaking investigative work

How a local beat reporter discovered the Shipbreaking story

Getting started

An editor’s key question – How does this industry operate everyplace else?

What would you do? Where would you start?

The workers – the heart of this story

The workers: obstacles we faced

How do you find workers and persuade them to talk on the record

An ethical dilemma

Balancing the need to get workers to talk on the record

versus

A desire to protect them from being fired for speaking out or deported

The Shipbreakers persuading them to talk

Getting the Navy to answer our questions

• What to do when someone won’t talk to you

• An alternate strategy to get answers from the Navy

Public Records

• Court records – Mendoza case in Brownsville

• Bankruptcy Court records – underlying economics of the shipbreaking industry

• FOIA

• OSHA records

The key economic issues

• Understanding the economics of the shipbreaking business was a key to cracking this story.

• Public records, revealing sources

The Asbestos Issue

• The issues, the science

The Asbestos Issue

• Finding and talking to victims – how we found the men who built these Navy ships decades ago

• The two key questions to ask yourself when looking for hard-to-find information

Taking the local story global

• How we learned about the US Navy’s plan to send its old ships overseas for scrapping

Reporting in India

• Strategies for reporting investigative business stories overseas

How to deal with obstacles overseas

• Stringers and fixers

• The language problem – and the use of interpreters

The Writing Process

• How we decided what stories to tell

• Pulling the project together

• Importance of clear and compelling writing when telling an investigative or complex business investigative story

Impact and follow-up

• Congress holds hearings

• The White House prohibits the Navy from sending old warships to the Third World

Why was this a good topic for an investigative story

• Told readers something they didn’t know

• Revealed a systemic wrong

• Possibility of reform

A tough balancing act

• How you can successfully cover your beat – and also pursue big stories

• Tips for convincing your editors to give you the extra time you need

Questions

Summary

• You can do groundbreaking investigative work if you master the fundamentals of reporting and writing