About IRW

The Investigative Reporting Workshop is an innovative, journalistic training hospital and editorially independent, nonprofit newsroom based at American University in Washington, D.C.

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The IRW consists of undergraduate, graduate student journalists and early career journalists who work under the guidance of full-time professional editors and in partnership with professional newsrooms to produce investigative and enterprise projects that would otherwise go undone. To date, IRW has published hundreds of investigations and trained more than 240 students.

IRW’s standing partnership with the Washington Post has borne dozens of investigations, including contributions to coverage of the January 6, 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. IRW students have also partnered with the Post on investigations into corruption in professional body building, no-knock warrants (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), how the NFL has blocked the rise of black coaches, and doctors who spread deadly COVID misinformation.

Other reporting partnerships have included collaborations with PBS FRONTLINE, NBC News, WAMU-FM, Reveal News, the New Yorker, ABC World News Tonight, Politico, the Philadelphia Inquirer, McClatchy newspapers, Mother Jones magazine, and the Columbia Journalism Review.

The IRW was founded in 2008 by investigative journalist Charles Lewis and former American University journalism director Wendell Cochran, who envisioned an organization modeled on the Children’s Television Workshop, which produced “Sesame Street,” and evolved into an incubator of educational television.