Recent research

Making Investigative Journalism Work: From the VVOJ Investigative Reporting Conference in Utrecht, Nov. 2009
Four years ago the Global Investigative Journalism Network, of which I'm a founding member, began exploring new futures for investigative reporting.  People like Brant Houston, Charles Lewis and David Kaplan drove work on foundation-based models, and I started designing principles and models for private enterprises.   At this posting I am being funded by the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre to develop a viable business model for investigative reporting,  based on the ideas you'll find in this presentation to the Dutch-Belgian investigative reporters' association, VVOJ.  My thanks to the OpenDemocracy Foundation, the London Centre for Investigative Journalism, the GIJN and the VVOJ for helping me to refine and present these ideas.

Preventing the Next Financial Crisis:  In December 2008 a high-powered (in every sense) group of economists, Federal Reserve and EU officials and others gathered at the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia University to figure out what went smash and how to stop the next one.  I was there to write the final report, a quotable handbook to the underlying issues.  Many of the subjects discussed in the report are still hot topics, which says a lot about how hard it has been and will be to reform the financial sector.  Click here.

Why the crisis of business is only beginning:  What does the financial crisis have in common with Watergate?  A long tail that will change the dreams of generations to come.  First published on Opendemocracy.net, a terrific source of ideas and debate and a great example of Creative Commons publishing.  Click here.

Features and Investigations
(BTW: Some of these stories are used as examples in "Story-Based Inquiry", and if you use the manual to teach, feel free to use them as advance reading.)

My Nights with Godard: One day someone called up claiming to be the New Wave auteur.  The next thing I knew, I was in a movie.  This account focuses on the methods of the master.

IRE AWARD WINNER! How France's Pols Pocketed $45M 
Ten years ago, French politicians sought escape from the financial scandals that hammered them by reforming the salary scale for elected officials.  But the solution created another scandal waiting to be exposed -- which is what my team from the Insititut Français de Presse did in Le Figaro.

Portrait of a Killing: A True Story of Power, Art and Crime
She owned a heritage of Old Masters paintings, and a lot of people -- including the ones who ran the Louvre -- wanted a piece of it.  For the first time in English, a true crime novella drawn from a nonfiction novel that drew international rave reviews on its French release.

National Headliners and Clarion Awards Winner! Baby Doe: The Miracle and the Shame of the Preemie Laws
Twenty years ago, a little-known law made it a crime to give anything but maximum aggressive treatment to newborns that nature meant to die.  Result: A new population of severely handicapped children appeared -- and the same government left them and their families to foot the bills. 

The Shot Heard 'Round Le Monde
France's newspaper of record runs billboards saying, "The price of  your freedom is ours." But a new book claims Le Monde has gone bad to the bone. To see what the fuss is about, check out my review of The Hidden Face of Le Monde, first published in the Columbia Journalism Review.

France Cracks Down on Investigative Reporters
After the AZF chemical factory blew up in Toulouse, the French press went to work -- and got threatened with a death sentence by the State for doing so.  From the German journalism quarterly Message, here for the first time in English. 

The Ramsey File
Everyone said the Ramseys killed their own child -- everyone, minus one.  In Salon, I first made the case against rushing to judgement.