Workshop News
MacArthur awards grant for 'Betrayal' film
April 2, 2013
Cabin Creek Films and the Investigative Reporting Workshop are co-developing a film based on "The Betrayal of the American Dream," a 2012 book and an ongoing Workshop series of stories about the economic decline, particularly the intersection of federal regulations and Wall Street policies in impacting the decline of the middle class. Two-time Academy Award-winner Barbara Koppel will direct the film.
Apply for summer program
Dec. 20, 2012
The Investigative Reporting Workshop, a professional news organization in the School of Communication at American University, is looking for smart, engaged students from around the country for summer internship.
'Truth' to be published in late 2013
Dec. 10, 2012
Charles Lewis, executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, is finishing his sixth book, “The Future of Truth,” which will be published in late 2013 or early 2014 by Public Affairs.
He began working on the book in 2005 with a focus on the origins and trajectory of public relations and propaganda; the deadliest deceptions by government and companies; and the truth-telling capacity of journalists and their news organizations over the past century.
His research led him to explore national “moments of truth” in contemporary U.S. history — moments in which news organizations, through their deep independent reporting, exposed egregious abuses of power and shaped history. The idea was to look to the past to inform and to inspire the future.
As a precursor to the book, the Workshop launched Investigating Power, at investigatingpower.org, earlier this year. It features videos on the journalists, their stories, the stories-behind-their-stories and the transcendent times they lived through. Lewis' story on Investigating Power is on the Workshop's site, which will be updated with news from the book next year.
Workshop co-producing series on climate change
Dec. 3, 2012
We've begun reporting on climate change as part of a series titled, “Years of Living Dangerously,” set to air on the cable channel Showtime in the fall of 2013. The Investigative Reporting Workshop is one of several producers on the project.
Workshop-FRONTLINE-documentary wins national Imagen award
Aug. 13, 2012
"Lost in Detention," a co-production of the Investigative Reporting Workshop and PBS FRONTLINE, won an Imagen award for Best National Informational Program.
Workshop expands its publishing partnerships
April 18, 2012
The Workshop partnered with the Investigative News Network in another in a series on broadband subscribership rates. The result was much more widespread dissemination of the material.
Workshop project a finalist in Scripps Howard Awards
March 21, 2012
The Workshop has been named a “finalist” in the Business/Economics Reporting category of the Scripps Howard Awards for our project, "What Went Wrong: The Betrayal of the American Dream." The series, spearheaded by Kat Aaron as project editor, with reporters Jim Steele and Don Barlett as well as contributions from the staff, focuses on how policies in Washington and on Wall Street have hurt Americans for far longer than the most recent recession. We're honored to be in good company.
Summer internship applications due April 2
March 9, 2012
The Workshop is accepting applications for summer internships.
Aaron awarded fellowship
Dec. 19, 2011
Our Kat Aaron, project editor of What Went Wrong, has been named as an Alicia Patterson Fellow for 2012. The prestigious Patterson fellowship will allow Aaron to continue her reporting into the functioning of the nation's civil courts system. She wrote two stories on the civil courts earlier this year, exploring the history of controversy around the Legal Services Corporation and the impact of budget cuts on civil justice. The program, named for Alicia Patterson, the longtime editor and publisher of Newsday, was was established in 1965 to support working journalists pursuing in-depth reporting. It is America’s oldest writing fellowship. Aaron is one of six journalists awarded the Patterson fellowship for 2012.
