Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism - Program

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Investigative Reporting

Jonathan Jones, Carrie Lozano and Samuel Kennedy.

The Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, established permanently in 2006, formalizes pioneering work begun in 1991 in the university seminars taught by Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter and producer Lowell Bergman, then a CBS investigative reporter and 60 Minutes producer.

Funded almost entirely by private grants and gifts, the program is dedicated to promoting in-depth reporting in the public interest. That commitment includes nurturing and guiding a new generation of investigative reporters. In addition to participating in graduate seminars dedicated to teaching investigative tools and techniques, the faculty, staff and students work together on local, national and international stories for broadcast, print and the Web.

The Investigative Reporting Program’s endowment and general fund provides scholarships, mentoring and logistical support for students pursuing in-depth reporting in the public interest.

Classroom guests are frequent and include private investigators; current and former FBI, DHS and CIA officials and agents; prosecutors; judges; lawyers; and others whose work is key to developing investigative stories. Students learn the legal complexities of using confidential sources, filing FOIA requests, taking depositions, and dealing with libel lawyers and other specialists whose interests often overlap with those of reporters.

Projects

Projects produced by the program have appeared on such national television programs as PBS' Frontline and Frontline/WORLD as well as ABC's Nightline, CBS’ Evening News and 60 Minutes II. In print, stories for which students were the primary authors or contributors have appeared in the pages of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle as well as a wide variety of magazines and international and local newspapers.

Projects in which the students' roles were acknowledged and credited have received the Pulitzer Prize, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award, Peabody Award, National Press Club Award, George Polk award, the Sidney Hillman Award, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) award, the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, and the Columbia Online Journalism Award as well as the Bloomberg student reporting award.

Fellowships

In 2007, the Investigative Reporting Program established the first postgraduate fellowships in investigative reporting in the nation for promising young journalists. This yearlong program is without peer at any academic institution. It is designed to nurture young journalists who want to pursue in-depth public service reporting by providing them with a salary, benefits and editorial guidance.

Funded by the Sandler Foundation, The Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, Scott and Jennifer Fearon, the Gruber Family Foundation and Steve Silberstein, they are open to all working journalists, but preference is given to graduates of UC Berkeley's master's program in journalism.

In addition to regular interaction with the faculty of the journalism school and the instructors in investigative reporting, the fellows participate in weekly seminars in investigative reporting taught by Lowell Bergman; Robert Gunnison, the journalism school's director of school affairs; and lecturer Tim Reiterman with the assistance of investigative reporter Marlena Telvick.

Winners of the 2008-2009 $45,000 full-time year-long fellowships were Jonathan Jones, a 2005 Berkeley graduate, Samuel Kennedy, a 2001 Berkeley graduate and Carrie Lozano, a 2005 Berkeley graduate. The fellowships began on September 1st.

Winners of the 2007-2008 fellowships were Andrew Becker, a 2005 UC Berkeley graduate; Marton Dunai, a 2004 Berkeley graduate; and Siri Schubert, a freelance business and financial reporter in San Francisco.

Mr. Becker's nine-month project, "Mexico: Crimes at the Border," a joint investigation by PBS Frontline/WORLD and The New York Times which aired May 27, 2008 examined the increasingly lucrative business of human smuggling at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the American border officials corrupted by the trade. Through interviews conducted in Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California, and dramatic undercover surveillance video from U.S. law enforcement, Mr. Becker, along with correspondent Lowell Bergman, report on how this illicit and growing business has spurred an increase in corruption cases investigated by the FBI and other federal agencies across the southwest border.

Becker’s May 2008 front page above-the-fold New York Times story “Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side,” outlined the case of two former Border Patrol officers "suspected of helping to smuggle an untold number of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Brazil across the border”, that had quit the Border Patrol two years ago and were believed to be somewhere in Mexico, was followed by an October 2008 story “Former Border Agents Arrested” which broke news that the two had been arrested and jailed in Mexico. Mr. Becker is now working as a reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting.

In 2008, Ms. Schubert published an article on the waning enthusiasm over ethanol in Wirtschaftswoche – the German Business Week. Ms. Schubert also spent three weeks in Brazil investigating a homicide on a farm owned by the world’s largest producer of pesticides. The multimedia project will air as a Rough Cut for the PBS Frontline/WORLD website in the Spring of 2009. Ms. Schubert also contributed reporting to Frontline producer Marty Smith’s documentary “Heat”, a two-hour report on global warming and the debate inside U.S. business on how to respond, which aired in October 2008. After her fellowship ended, Ms. Schubert went on to write a front-page story in the December 20, 2008 business section of the New York Times detailing the unusual role of an executive of Siemens, one of the world's largest companies in a sweeping international bribery scheme.

Marton Dunai worked on stories investigating the nuclear power industry in America following field reporting he conducted in Washington, DC and Idaho.

The search for 2009-2010 fellows began in February 2009. The deadline for fellowship applications for the academic year is April 3. This year's recipients will be announced in June. The fellows' year-long tenure will begin on September 1.