Investigative Reporting Workshop

The Investigative Reporting Workshop (IRW) is an editorially independent newsroom at the American University School of Communication. IRW pairs experienced professional reporters/editors with journalism students to conduct in-depth, data-based, long-form journalism on such issues as politics, the environment, health, criminal justice, national security, immigration, and the economy. These investigations are co-published across print, web, television, and radio with major media partners and nonprofit news organizations, including the Washington Post, NPR, and Reveal. 

In recent years, much of the traditional American media, in a drive to cut costs and maintain profits, has slashed the capacity to do investigative journalism. This has happened just as the forces of technology and globalization are combining to make government and powerful private institutions less transparent, and thus, less subject to public scrutiny and oversight.

IRW addresses this fundamental issue for democracy in two important ways:

• By conducting significant investigative journalism projects on a national and international scale.
• By researching and experimenting with new models for creating and delivering investigative projects.

Founded in 2008 by Charles Lewis, IRW is one of the largest and most innovative university-based newsrooms in the country. Lewis is a 1998 MacArthur Fellow, former producer at ABC News and CBS News “60 Minutes,” and founder of two Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit news organizations, the Center for Public Integrity and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.