New England Center for Investigative Reporting

The "New England Center for Investigative Reporting" (NECIR) is a nonprofit investigative newsroom housed at Boston University^[1] and the studios of WGBH News in Boston, Massachusetts. Its mission is to ensure the survival of serious, in-depth journalism in New England and across the nation and to train the next generation of investigative reporters. Founded in 2009 by veteran investigative journalists Joe Bergantino and Maggie Mulvihill, NECIR’s budget is approximately $870,000 a year. Half of that is covered by the center’s investigative reporting training programs and the sale of stories. The rest of its budget is funded by foundations, individual donors and Boston University.

History

By 2008, the financial instabilities facing newspapers was leading to a precipitous decline in investigative reporting in New England and around the country.^[2] In January 2009, Bergantino and Mulvihill –in collaboration with Boston University College of Communication Dean and former Miami Herald executive editor Tom Fiedler—launched NECIR to produce high-quality, high-impact multi-media stories about the environment, public health and safety, education, criminal justice, the economy, and a variety of other public issues affecting citizens. Those stories have appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, in mid-size newspapers across Massachusetts and New England and on radio and TV news outlets in the Boston area.

In September 2013, NECIR signed a partnership agreement with WGBH News^[3] to amplify the reach of its stories on public radio and TV. The Center also hired two full-time former Boston Globe reporters, both Pulitzer Prize finalists,^[4][5] and began sharing the salary of an additional reporter with WGBH.^[6] The center also shifted its journalistic model away from producing one investigative story a month to reporting and researching subjects that will result in more frequent watchdog coverage of institutions, government and corporations.

Awards and recognition

NECIR has produced more than sixty investigative stories that have reached millions of readers, viewers and listeners. For example, one of the Center’s investigations—a comprehensive look at mobile phone apps dispensing medical advice—ran in the Washington Post’s Health and Science section,^[7] on the Scripps News Service and on Hearst TV stations nationally.^[8]

In 2011 NECIR won two awards for its coverage of carbon offset fraud^[9] and shared a national award for an article on campus sexual assaults.^[10] It won several more awards in 2012 for a year-long investigation on the sentencing of juvenile killers, which was also cited in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. Another NECIR story, produced in collaboration with Boston inner-city high school students, prompted immediate state action and a Boston Globe editorial.

Awards include: the David S. Barr Social Justice Award; first place in Regional Investigative Reporting from the National Federation of Press Women; 3rd Place in Web Journalism from NFPW, finalists for the 2011 Livingston Award for Young Journalists and the National Council on Problem Gambling's Reporting Award.

Training

NECIR's summer Investigative Reporting Workshop for high school students is the largest summer journalism program of its kind in the country. Since its inception in 2009, it has trained about 300 young journalists. It has attracted students from at least 23 states and eight countries. The center’s Investigative Reporting Certificate Program has attracted journalists from almost every continent. In 2014, NECIR will conduct a series of watchdog reporting workshops for journalists across the United States and Russia.

Supporters

NECIR is supported by the following organizations:

• Boston University
• John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation
• McCormick Foundation
• The Fund for Investigative Journalism
• The Deer Creek Foundation
• Open Society Foundations
• The Harbus Foundation
• The Hearst Foundation

Staff

Joe Bergantino, Co-founder, Executive Director, Managing Editor; former I-Team reporter for WBZ-TV in Boston, ABC News correspondent

Clara Germani, Investigations editor

Jenifer McKim, Senior investigative reporter and managing editor; former Boston Globe reporter

Beth Daley, Investigative reporter and director of partnerships; former Boston Globe reporter

Hunter DeLench, Training manager

Nathan Tobey, Audience engagement consultant

Joshua Eaton, Web producer

References