An interview with Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor of Investigations Jeff Leen.

Mr. Leen, in one of your recent interviews you mentioned that now we live in the ‘Golden Age’ of international investigative reporting. What do you mean exactly and when did that Golden Age start?

I think I was referring to the fact that there was a Golden Age of investigative reporting going on outside the United States. The spread of globalization and democracy and the end of the Cold War allowed opportunities for journalists in many countries. Now what I’m saying is a remarkable explosion of high quality investigative reporting by journalists around the world. It could be in Armenia, it could be in Kazakhstan, it could be in Poland or Latvia, Hungary. But all over the world, young people are becoming journalists and they’re exposing, you know, government corruption or wrongdoings or official abuse in a way they’ve never done before.

So, did you mean mainly post Soviet countries?

Post Soviet and also Arab Spring. There is an organization that was founded in this country in 1974 called Investigative Reporters and Editors. They have many foreign members. And they teach techniques that reporters can receive and use in their own countries. So this was an expansion of the craft of investigative reporting in last 20 years we had never seen before. So it’s not just post Soviet; it’s post Soviet, it’s Arab Spring, it’s in Pakistan. You can see it everywhere in Africa.

And what I find remarkable is that the young journalists are extraordinary brave, and they’re taking extraordinary risks to try to serve the public. In the United States, you know journalists are not killed, threatened, bribed and abused, or beaten. We can be sued if we are wrong but we don’t meet the same obstacles and the same pressures that other journalists do.

Are you aware of the state of investigative journalism in the same countries now? I mean also post Soviet countries including Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

I’m aware of some situations. We just wrote a piece about Khadija Ismaylova. This year we have been doing a series about the struggles that journalists had throughout the world. The first story was about the struggles of a Pakistani investigative television reporter who was trying to write about both Islamic extremists in his country and government officials who may have ties to those people. He was shot while living under constant death threats. The second story was about Bahrain, which is a US ally, where US has based its fleet. So even if it’s US ally, it’s not easy for journalists.

The third story was about the struggles of journalists in Afghanistan, where US government has spent over one hundred sixteen million dollars to foster journalism. More than 40 young people, mainly in radio stations, but also in some newspapers, have been killed since the US invaded Afghanistan. The stories were about the struggles they had trying to create an open press. The fourth story was about Khadija Ismaylova in Azerbaijan and her struggles, and how she ended up in prison.

So I’m familiar with that and we have had some foreign journalists who have come here. We had Hubert Humphrey fellow from Hungary, we had a reporter from Ukraine. I’ve been visited by the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), so I’ve heard from them what they are doing and what their struggles are.

And what does your experience tell you? How long will Khadija stay in prison? Dou you think she will be released?

Well, I think that is an interesting question, because the problem with any new field that is growing is that you have pioneers who take risks and then often suffer the penalty of those risks. And Khadija is one of those pioneers. She probably is the bravest investigative reporter I’ve ever seen, and she is now in prison. The government has turned her into a murderer. I think it’s an embarrassment for the government to have her in prison. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her, but I know that many people are calling for her release. Many, you know, high-level people, and I think that there is a growing sense that Azerbaijan is always going to have black eyes and always be seen as not respecting   human rights. It doesn’t respect democracy or freedom of speech while she is in prison. So by turning her into a murderer and putting her in prison, they may think they’ve silenced her, but they just gave her a bigger platform. But as to how long she’s going to be there and what’s going to happen, I really don’t know.

Mr. Leen, investigative journalism, as you know, is very expensive. What I like to ask senior and experienced reporters is how we can find appropriate funds while remaining independent?

I think that investigative reporting is very expensive and can be very risky, but I think the secret to success is to start small with a sustainable model. So you don’t start right away with an investigation that’s going to take a year. When I started out doing stories that I considered to have some investigative qualities, sometimes it would be two or three days, sometimes it's just a matter of asking the right questions and getting the right documents and confronting people with those documents; whether that takes two or three days, or two or three weeks.

But when you’re starting out, you should be sustainable. You have to try to not be too ambitious too soon. That’s number one. Number two is…. I think there is strength in numbers and there's safety in numbers. Rather than everything depending on one reporter, one newspaper, I think that there are newspapers or reporters who can join forces in some of these situations. I think in some of these countries there are NGOs that create investigative reporting centers that bring in people who can provide training.  And there is the OCCRP that creates a network where reporters can support each other.

Don’t try to do too much too soon. Look for allies who can help you, not just with expertise, but also with money, grants and things like that. You have to try to build the culture of investigative reporting, and I think in some of these countries journalists get together to form a group, association, and that helps, because there is a sense that you know it’s not just Khadija Ismaylova, it’s this person and that person. The strength of any press is not in just any one reporter, but it’s in all the reporters.

You know reporters are competitive; they want to get the story first. But in some investigative reporting you have to support each other, especially in problematic countries. I think that the trick is to spread the skills, share the risk, and support each other.  

We still trying to figure out how to support all the investigative reporting we want do in this country with the financial pressures we’re under and nobody has figured out the answer yet. But the investigative drive, the investigative spirit, I believe lives on in human nature. You don’t like to be lied to.  You want to find out what the secrets are. You want to find out what the powerful people are up to. You want to shed light on darkness. And that’s just a human impulse that we all have…. So as we get freer or more globalized we’re going to naturally want to do that more and more.

Is it acceptable for you when a media owner uses other businesses to fund their media operation?  

Well, do you mean a business that is separate from the media?

Yes.

It used to be the case that people who owned newspapers in this country often owned other businesses. For example take Eugene Meyer. When he bought the Washington Post in 1933, he lost money for twenty years. He was able to do that because he had other businesses, he had other investments, which helped to support him. So I think that you can have other businesses that may support your journalism business, but you have to be careful that you keep them separate, and that you don’t use the journalism business to promote the other businesses, that you don’t corrupt. It’s can’t be for the private interest, it has to be for public good.

Is it possible for Washington Post to earn money from advertising?

We do earn money from advertising. Not as much as we used to, and that’s a problem. But we still do get money from advertising.

Mr. Leen, you give talks at Missouri University.  What investigative journalism skills cannot be taught?

I think you can teach writing and reporting, but you can’t really teach somebody to dig for the truth. They have to have that impulse within. So if they don’t have the drive to find something out and to bring that to public, then they will never be really an investigative reporter. I believe people are born with that drive.

If you don’t have that inner drive, inner will, you will not be able to do this type of work, because it’s very difficult, risky, and there are many other easier ways to be a journalist.

You are the only journalist in the world who has received seven Pulitzer Prizes. In this sense you had no teacher. What are the main lessons you’ve learned from your experience and what would like to convey to those making their first foray in investigative journalism?

I think that every reporter, an investigative reporter and any other reporter, uses the same tools.  You know, they talk to sources, they get documents…. There are five main skills. Writing is the first skill. Writing on deadline is the second skill. The third skill is generalized reporting, which means to be able to cover breaking news of any sort, whether it’s politics or crime, schools or health or financial news. The fourth skill is to be able to dig as an investigative reporter. The digging skill, the fourth skill has two components -  one is that you have to be able to use human sources, and two you  have to know how to use paper records, how to follow paper trails. So there is a lot to be said about each of those.  You have to be able to use those two skills, because one skill will usually limit you. And the fifth skill is the ability to use the strategic thinking to connect the dots and to figure out how to go around the obstacles …. What it starts with is calling people on the telephone to make a source or to meet them, and then the sources lead you to documents.  The documents lead you to other sources, so you start with small, baby steps, and then you build on that to create more complex stories, story structures. You said I had no teacher, but the truth is you learn every day if you’re an investigative reporter. You start with no knowledge about something.

There is a movie you should see called “Spotlight” about how Boston Globe reporters exposed what was happening with the priests in Catholic Church. It became a worldwide story. And when they started they didn’t know anything. So they had to learn from the moment they started.

In 2001, a team of reporters at the Boston Globe began investigating reports of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The “Spotlight” teem.

We are not engineers. We are not physicists. So you have to have the ability to teach yourself difficult subjects. What we need to do is to know how to learn, and if you don’t know that, if you’re just operating with your knowledge base, and you can’t really go behind that problem, you’ll never make the breakthrough, because you’re trying to find out something you don’t know.

I also say that to be an investigative reporter you have to have a soul of a gambler, which is the willingness to take risks. The act of investigative reporting is always a risk, because you never know if you going to get the story, you never know if you going to break through the secrecy. It’s not just physical risk or danger or legal risk, but it’s also the risk of failure, the risk of going out there and not being able to find out anything. So you have to have that combination of the skills.

When I start working on a new story I sometimes get lost in facts, documents and different sources. Do you usually see the end when you start an investigation?

Sometimes the story is small and simple enough for you to see something.  Somebody may say this official is stealing money… But on the big, complex investigations you often don’t see the end, and that is part of the journey. When we were looking at the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the story started with the fact that Indian tribes were paying him exorbitant sums of money, so the question was what was he doing. The story unfolded in stages as we started asking questions; making sources and documents. In my mind the best investigations are when we don’t know where we are going, you don’t know how it’s going to end.  The best investigations also require a little bit of luck, so you’re working on the certain area and you’re making progress, and you find out something really big because you’re there asking the question.

It’s a good question. I think the best investigations are when you never know how it’s going to end. And if you are lucky, keep going. When we were looking at Jack Abramoff, we discovered that he had bought a cruise ship line. And when we looked at that deal, and there is a lawsuit, it is a very complicated deal. It turned out that cruise ship line was purchased through fraud. And the fraud was a crime, and he was convicted of it before he was indicted for influencing politicians. We didn’t know it was going to go that way.

Mr. Leen, how should an investigative reporter proceed if corruption is so widespread in the country that people have become inured to it? For example, in Armenia it’s forbidden for a parliament member to own a business at the same time. When we write about such cases, it no longer causes shock among the public.  Such corruption is all encompassing and people know this.   How can a reporter approach such cases?

We often write stories that nobody cares about, because like you said we can’t amaze them or they’re cynical, or there is too much other noise. It’s a really good question. I think that all we can do is do our best job to get the truth, to make the breakthrough, to dig, to overcome the obstacles to expose the truth, to shed the light. You should try to write in a compelling way to find the example that tells the story in the best way.

But our job is to make the record of our time, to shed the light and if people don’t want to see it, don’t react to it, then you can’t be discouraged, because it doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way. Sometimes it takes years for people to catch up with the truth; the importance of the truth.

Sexual abuse by Boston priests was going on for decades, and other people had written about it, and that didn’t, you know, amaze people. Finally, the Boston Globe did it, and they described the whole system of it. They got the documents that allowed them to describe the system from the inside. It changed everything. So you may be the lonely investigative reporter who is writing about this type of corruption in Armenia and the people who own these businesses, and all you can do is do your story. But five years from now or ten years from now, somebody may build on that. And this may lead to change. So you are just a part of continuing to tell people the truth.  You are adding truth into the system, and even if it doesn’t change things over night or get the reaction you want, it’s helping to disinfect the politics or the society, even if in a small way. And that small way can be an important way. So you have try and can’t be discouraged.

Jeff Leen has worked on investigations that have been honored with seven Pulitzer Prizes. Hurricane Andrew’s impact on South Florida (Gold Medal, 1993), Washington D.C. police shootings(Gold Medal, 1999), Abuse in D.C. group homes(Gold Medal, 2000), Death among children monitored by D.C. social services(Investigative reporting, 2002), The September 11 plot(National reporting, 2012), The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal(Investigative Reporting, 2006), Dick Cheney vice presidency (National Reporting, 2008).

Four other investigations have been Pulitzer finalists, including examinations of police overtime abuse in South Florida, the Nature Conservancy, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and federal farm subsidies. See more here.