The Center for Public Integrity

The Center for Public Integrity and the Paley Center for Media presented a program on innovative approaches to funding and producing investigative journalism.

The event consisted of three panels: Anatomy of an Investigative Report, New Models for Investigative Journalism and Next Big Thing: New Tools for Digital Digging. You can watch the panels in full below, or see a summary of the best talking points and tweets compiled through Storify.

Panel One: Anatomy of an Investigative Report

Anatomy of an Investigative Report from The Paley Center For Media on FORA.tv

Panel Two: New Models for Investigative Journalism

New Models for Investigative Journalism from The Paley Center For Media on FORA.tv

Countrywide Whistleblower Sings

Countrywide Financial was the top originator of sub-prime mortgages during in the years leading up to the 2008 economic meltdown. Now we hear first-hand testimony from Eileen Foster, a Countrywide whistleblower who saw fraud on an outlandish scale. In an exclusive interview with iWatch News, the former internal investigator tells how mortgage brokers used scissors, tape and Wite-Out to create fake bank statements, inflated property appraisals and other phony paperwork. Inside the heaps of paper, for example, she found mock-ups that indicated to investigators that workers had, as a matter of routine, literally cut and pasted the address for one home onto an appraisal for a completely different piece of property. Foster was ultimately fired for reporting the violations but has since won a whistleblower case against the company and $930,000.

Congress Investigates Cozy Relationships with White House

House Republicans have launched a broad investigation into White House ties to campaign donors seeking government contracts, loans and other benefits, and are requesting information on White House contacts with LightSquared, a company whose employees made large contributions to Democrats while gaining access to presidential aides. We broke the LightSquared story as well as the tale of the bankrupt solar company Solyndra. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is concerned about the government “picking winners and losers.” The Center is frankly more worried about big campaign contributors buying access and favors from the government.

Ellen Weiss has been named executive editor at the Center for Public Integrity, one of four recent  hires of top journalists at one of the country’s oldest and largest nonprofit investigative news organizations.

Weiss will oversee the Center’s domestic investigations and editorial staff. She comes to the Center with deep journalism and management experience as former senior vice president of news at NPR. There Weiss managed 36 bureaus, more than 400 U.S. and international staffers and a $75 million budget. Under Weiss’ leadership, the audience for NPR.org grew from four million unique monthly visitors in 2006 to 12 million in 2010. During that timeframe she also oversaw a 10 percent growth in audience for NPR’s news programs to more than 27 million weekly listeners.

Weiss also created and helped lead the NPR News investigative reporting unit and the Planet Money economic reporting team.

“Ellen Weiss is one of the best and most creative news executives in the business,” said the Center for Public Integrity’s Executive Director William E. Buzenberg. “I know the Center will gain enormously from her knowledge of investigative reporting and digital media.”

Weiss spent 29 years at the public radio network, leading the NPR news division for five years. For 12 years she was executive producer of All Things Considered and served as senior editor of the National Desk where she organized and led domestic news coverage for all NPR programs and NPR.org. Weiss had a major role in leading the network’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks and edited large award-winning investigative reporting projects, including reports on abuses that led to changes in U.S. government detention center policies, and reports on soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder that sparked Senate and Pentagon investigations.