“Everybody needs an editor.” This was the mantra that veteran Associated Press investigative editor Ron Nixon asked the audience to repeat during a session at the 13th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (#GIJC23) on editing investigations. Why? Because as the panelists explained, great investigative editors make stories stronger, protect and motivate reporters, and make investigations more efficient.
“What makes a good investigator is not necessarily what makes a good investigative editor,” said Drew Sullivan, publisher and co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). For Sullivan, the difference is both in what editors are tasked with and their approach to the job. It’s an investigative editor’s job to make the reporter a success, to mentor them rather than be their boss, and to take the blame if anything goes wrong.
Investigative editors are not allowed an ego, he said: “You have to give away all the credit.”
From story pitch to post-publication, here’s first-hand advice on how to be a great investigative editor from OCCRP’s Sullivan, Nixon, who is vice president of news and head of investigations, enterprise, partnerships, and grants at AP; Alejandra Xanic, editor and co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab, a nonprofit in Mexico that publishes investigations and trains new investigative editors in Mexico, El Salvador, and Brazil; and Vinod K. Jose, the former editor of India’s The Caravan.
1. Identify the story
“When you’re working across cultures and collaborative projects, there’s often quite a different idea of what makes a good story,” said Sullivan. A good investigative story should be focused, achievable, important, appealing to readers, potentially impactful, and not too expensive, he said.
AP’s Nixon said he deploys conceptual editing at the beginning of an investigation and will sit down and ask reporters to tell him a story. “People start to list facts; I don’t want facts, I want the story,” he said. “It helps you conceptualize where you are going. They’ve got a bunch of facts but it’s up to you as an editor to draw the story out of them.”
2. Chart a good investigative plan
Sullivan said an investigation should not move forward until the critical information needed to confirm the story has been identified. “Force reporters to prove the information that meets the minimum story and do nothing else before that,” said Sullivan. It’s an editor’s job to keep asking that question and stop reporters from jumping ahead to work on characters and interviews, for example.
“How you prove that critical information dictates what you can say in that story and how you can tell it,” he said.
3. Keep the story focused
Ask reporters what the thesis of their story is to help them focus. Xanic gets reporters to note this down and post it on their desktop as a physical reminder of the story’s focus, while accepting that this may change as it develops.
Talking to reporters regularly and repeatedly will help them figure out the crux of their investigation and the process, said Sullivan: “Reporters think by talking. You [the editor] are there to listen… Prompt them — that’s where they learn and understand their story.”
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