Scripps Expands Investigative Efforts in DC

The E.W. Scripps Co. today said it is deepening its commitment to journalism with the expansion of its television investigative reporting operations in Washington.

The Scripps Washington bureau, home of Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS), is becoming a fully multimedia, national news organization pursuing enterprise and investigative stories with national impact for broadcast TV, newspapers and digital platforms in addition to the local stories the bureau covers today.

The enhanced TV investigation team will:

• Focus on investigative stories for television that are national in scope as well as those investigations that will be part of “team investigative coverage” in partnership with local TV investigative units.
• Launch a more intense review and analysis of government decisions and the direction of government agencies that dramatically affect all communities.
• Develop in-depth investigations through a partnership with Scripps newspapers, digital news teams and the SHNS, now in its 96^th year of national and international coverage from its offices in Washington.

Leading this new, high-profile effort, are:

Lawan Hamilton is the executive producer of the investigation team. She has expertise in both investigational journalism and the application of technology for advanced storytelling.  Most recently she worked as data projects manager at Scripps headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.  In this role, she combined her computer assisted reporting skills to create data-driven visualizations to showcase investigations and specialty data for all Scripps broadcast properties across multiple digital platforms.

Prior to that she worked as executive producer of investigations and special projects at KSHB in Kansas City, Missouri, a Scripps property, and also as an investigative producer specializing in computer assisted reporting at KNXV Phoenix, a Scripps station. 

Jim Osman is the lead reporter for the investigative bureau. He is an 18-time Emmy Award winning investigative reporter who most recently was a member of the investigative unit at KYW Philadelphia. From 2002 through 2005, Osman was a reporter for the ABC 15 Investigators at KNXV Phoenix.

Osman is an honors graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a Journalism degree. He has also completed the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University and interned at NBC’S Meet the Press with the late Tim Russert. 

Hamilton and Osman join Kristin Volk, a TV reporter in the Washington bureau, and a team of investigative reporters and editors who produced 11 major investigative projects during 2011. The projects ran on Scripps TV stations, newspapers and digital platforms, as well as in hundreds of other markets served by Scripps Howard News Service.  

For Scripps, 2012 is shaping up to be a year of expansion. In addition to the national TV investigation bureau, Scripps is focused on social gaming, creating new national programming for the fall, and focusing on election coverage with its Democracy 2012 initiative.