ABSTRACT
Reporters start on an investigative project when something they see or hear–gossip, or a news story, report, tip or complaint in a social media post–sparks a question. Complaints are seeds to good stories. When Julie Schmit was a reporter at USA Today she read a story about a commuter airplane crash; the pilot in the crash had been fired by another airline. She discovered a commuter airline industry growing too fast, a pilot shortage and inconsistent oversight. Jonathan Capriel was editor of the Daily Helmsman at the University of Memphis in 2016 when he noticed that many of the buses on the campus bus route ran empty. As a senior at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Jie Jenny Zou found an investigation by non-profit journalism organization ProPublica of links between university research and drug corporations. At Memphis State, Jonathan Capriel's premise was that the university wasted money on a bus system few students rode.
