investigative journalism

Some people flock to streaming platforms for juicy dramas. Others queue up quirky comedies. But there’s also an audience willing to binge-watch local journalism. Just ask NBC Bay Area (KNTV). Last week, the NBC O&O dropped its second season of Derailed, an in-depth digital series investigating problems at BART, the Bay Area’s beleaguered public transit system. The whole project lives on NBCBayArea.com, YouTube and Apple TV, ready to stream in six digestible episodes ranging from about 4 to 15 minutes long.

InvestigateTV, Gray Television’s national investigative unit, has been producing dozens of in-depth pieces airing across its stations and on an OTT channel dedicated to its work. Fronted by WVUE anchor Lee Zurik in New Orleans (above), its pieces are making an impact even in markets where Gray doesn’t have a station.

CBS News is promoting 11-year network veteran Len Tepper to executive director, CBS News Investigative Unit. Tepper is currently the investigative unit’s supervising senior producer.

Everything’s bigger in Texas. Even investigative journalism. Find out why KXAN Austin’s latest investigation involved almost two dozen people in news, digital, production and marketing, and how the station balances that content on TV and digital platforms across all the Nexstar stations in the Lone Star State.

The notion that every TV reporter can and should be digging harder in her or his everyday work, is one of the ideas behind a series of regional training sessions run by the Investigative Reporters and Editors. “IRE believes that every journalist can be a watchdog journalist,” says the organization’s director, Doug Haddix.

After investigative reporter Jeremy Jojola’s recent story on hate groups, an organization known as the Proud Boys posted angry tweets, including: “You are the enemy of the American people we will bring this to your home your work your child’s school. The way antifa does to us. The fury of America is upon you and your communist friends.”

Hank Price: “With the unfortunate demise of print, leading television groups are making an even stronger commitment to local investigations. They are doing this with a full understanding of the financial costs. Why? Because they are in the journalism business. That means putting the well-being of the communities they serve first, no matter the cost or political pressure.”

This has been the autumn of discontent for investigative TV journalists. “I would say that you don’t go to broadcast television to see investigative reporting these days,” said Lowell Bergman, a veteran investigative news producer and emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. “There’s much less of it because it’s a bigger hassle than other kinds of reporting. And network television has always been concerned not just with ratings but with profits.”

Gretchen Morgenson, the veteran investigative reporter who has won multiple journalism prizes for her coverage of Wall Street, is joining the investigative unit of NBC News.

It looks like NBC Boston’s (WBTS) emphasis on investigative journalism has paid dividends in Washington. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has reached out to Tesla with concerns about safety flaws in Tesla’s autopilot system, citing the station’s investigation.

Airing Sunday mornings, the investigative news program hosted by Sharyl Attkisson reaches nearly 700,000 households weekly.

An experimental Facebook Watch show reports on journalism while trying to reinvent it.