This discussion will cover the full scope of putting together long-form investigative pieces, including: what topics appeal to audiences; how can you make complex issues interesting and easy to understand; is television, the web, radio or print the best medium for long-form reports; and what methods of funding or business models are best suited to support in-depth stories.
Guests Include:
Ira Glass, Host and Producer, This American Life
David Remnick, Editor, The New Yorker
Raney Aronson-Rath, Series Senior Producer, PBS Frontline
Stephen Engelberg, Managing Editor, ProPublica
Moderated by Alison Stewart, Co-Anchor, PBS Need To Know.
Sponsored by ProPublica and The New School.
Bio
Raney Aronson-Rath
As senior producer for PBS' flagship public affairs documentary series FRONTLINE, Raney Aronson-Rath guides the editorial development and execution of the series' primetime television broadcasts. With Executive Producer David Fanning, she oversees all phases of film production, from story development and assignment through final edit and post-production. Aronson-Rath is also instrumental in the daily editorial management of the series' nonbroadcast initiatives, including new media projects, audience engagement, educational outreach and promotion.
Since joining FRONTLINE's staff in 2007, Aronson-Rath has supervised a number of FRONTLINE productions, including "Rules of Engagement," which was nominated for an Emmy, and films on domestic health care reform, America's debt crisis and international bribery. Her commitment to exploring how the Web and user-generated content can be used in the creation of public media led to the development of "Digital Nation," a year-long multiplatform initiative set to air in winter 2010.
Prior to joining the series as senior producer, Aronson-Rath produced, directed and wrote six FRONTLINE films -- "News War: Secrets, Sources & Spin"; "The Last Abortion Clinic"; "The Soldier's Heart"; "The Jesus Factor"; and "The Alternative Fix" -- as well as three FRONTLINE/World stories based in India and Hong Kong. Her FRONTLINE/World story on AIDS among India's sex workers won an Overseas Press Club Award.
Before her work with FRONTLINE, Aronson-Rath worked on a number of award-winning series at ABC News, including "Hopkins 24/7", which won the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton. She was coordinating producer on the award-winning ABC primetime series "Boston 24/7" and a field producer on several award-winning specials from the Peter Jennings Reporting unit. Aronson-Rath also lived and worked as a newspaper reporter for The China Post in Taipei, Taiwan, for two years.
Aronson-Rath was the 2005 inaugural recipient of the Peter S. McGhee Fellowship from WGBH. She has also been awarded the Kaiser Family Foundation's Media Fellowship, a Sundance Documentary Fund grant, a New York State Council on the Arts grant and an International Reporting Project Fellowship.
Aronson-Rath has a bachelor's degree in South Asian studies and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent her junior year living in Benaras, India. She received her master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Stephen Engelberg
Stephen Engelberg comes to ProPublica from The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, where he had been a managing editor since 2002. Before joining The Oregonian, Mr. Engelberg worked for The New York Times for 18 years, including stints in Washington, DC and Warsaw, Poland as well as in New York.
After beginning his career at the Times, he worked as a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Virginia and for The Dallas Morning News before returning to the Times to write news and investigative articles on national security matters.
After a stint as the Times bureau chief in Warsaw immediately following the collapse of Communism, he resumed his work as an investigative reporter in 1993. Mr. Engelberg shared in two George Polk Awards for reporting: the first, in 1989, for articles on nuclear proliferation; the second, in 1994, for articles on U.S. immigration. A group of articles he co-authored in 1995 on an airplane crash was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
Mr. Engelberg’s work since 1996 has focused largely on the editing of investigative projects. He started the Times's investigative unit in 2000. Projects he supervised at the Times on Mexican corruption (published in 1997) and the rise of Al Qaeda (published beginning in January 2001) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
During his years at The Oregonian, the paper won the Pulitzer for breaking news and was finalist for its investigative work on methamphetamines and charities intended to help the disabled. He is the co-author of Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (2001).
Ira Glass
Ira Glass is an American public radio personality, and host and producer of the radio and television show This American Life.
David Remnick
David Remnick is an American journalist, writer, and magazine editor. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998. He was named "Editor of the Year" by Advertising Age in 2000. Before joining The New Yorker, Remnick was a reporter and the Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post. He has also served on the New York Public Library's board of trustees. In 2010 he published his sixth book The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.
David Scobey
David is the executive dean of The New School for Public Engagement in New York City. He is a national leader in developing innovative methods to engage higher education institutions with communities outside the academy. He was director of Bates College's Harward Center, an academic center that brought together community-based learning and research, co-curricular work, and environmental stewardship. He was founding director of the University of Michigan's Arts of Citizenship program, an initiative to integrate civic engagement with the liberal arts.
He serves on the boards of Project Pericles and Bringing Theory to Practice, a project linking learning, civic engagement, and student wellbeing. David's scholarship explores politics, culture, and space in 19th-century America, particularly New York City. He taught for 16 years at the University of Michigan, where he earned tenure. He holds a PhD in American studies as well as an MA and BA from Yale.
Alison Stewart
Alison Stewart is an American radio and television journalist. She was one of the hosts of the Bryant Park Project, a morning drive news program from NPR. Stewart first gained widespread visibility as a political correspondent for MTV News in the 1990s.