Unleash the watchdogs -- and their trainers

A good watchdog needs good training.

A theme of this year's convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors is "Unleashing the Watchdogs." Listening to the panel on investigative reporting Thursday morning, I was ready to proclaim a secondary theme: Unleashing the trainers.

This industry too often treats training as a luxury, something that's nice to provide in good times but a first place to cut when budgets get tight. Actually, the tighter your budgets, the more you should train, because you need your staff to be even better at their jobs in lean times.

And if you want to perform the watchdog role in which journalists and newspapers pride themselves, you need lots of training.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution identified four "pillars" that would represent their primary newsroom efforts - watchdog reporting on every beat, alternative storytelling forms, community connections and online integration. But the paper recognized that achievement in those four areas wouldn't just happen. "All of our training in the newsroom is built around the four pillars," Deputy Managing Editor Shawn McIntosh told the editors gathered in Seattle.

Reporters took a yearlong watchdog reporting course. "You have to get pretty specific on watchdog training," McIntosh said. "You can't just say be a watchdog."

Training included an online scavenger hunt, where reporters needed to find answers to questions in public records databases. Questions ranged into sports (the tax lien on Michael Vick's house) and entertainment (how much Ludacris paid for his house), to show that these reporting skills apply to any beat.

The Journal-Constitution has a watchdog training committee to plan and promote the training.

Mark Katches, senior team leader for watchdog journalism at the Orange County Register, said training was essential to his paper's success in investigative reporting. Computer-assisted reporting specialists taught advanced CAR skills courses to nearly 50 people in the newsroom, so that this essential reporting skill would become less a specialty and more a part of every reporter's toolbox (a topic I've written about before).

Investigative reporters work alongside beat reporters, rather than an isolated I-team. They are expected to be teachers and mentors to their colleagues. "We try to bring the spirit of IRE into our newsroom as much as possible," Katches said. The beat reporter who does the best watchdog investigation during the year is sent to the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference.

As Seattle Times Managing Editor David Boardman, president of IRE, recounted his paper's successes in investigative reporting, he echoed the secondary theme of the day: "Training is just crucial."

What's your newsroom doing to unleash the watchdogs - and their trainers?