MAGAZINES MINE FREELANCE TALENT

Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal, Summer 2009 by Weinberg, Steve

When 1 moved from Washington, D.C., to Columbia, Mo., in 1983 to serve as IRE executive director, about 100 magazines received change of address notices from me. As both an investigative journalist and a "regular person," I have relied heavily on magazines to show me the way through life. Most of the magazines to which I subscribe regularly publish in-depth journalism.

It is no secret that in 1983, I could not follow magazine reporting on the Internet. Also, I could not visit Web sites because those creatures did not exist in any meaningful way. Subscribing to magazines or reading them at a library constituted my route to keeping up.

Many of the investigative and explanatory pieces from those magazines ended up in the IRE Resource Center, available to the entire organization's membership. Magazine investigations had been underrepresented in the Resource Center compared to those from daily newspapers and from television newsrooms, so I felt good about redressing the imbalance.

My educated guess is that some IRE members believe my devotion to magazine investigative and explanatory reporting is mostly irrelevant. After all, the Internet era has made mediumspecific discussion outmoded, yes?

I say no, and here is the main reason: Unlike newspaper and television newsrooms, many magazines rely heavily on freelance reporters. That reliance allows magazines to tap a talent pool pretty much ignored by other media. You can be sure that a high percentage of magazine investigations found in the IRE Resource Center have been reported by freelancers, myself included. Since 1 978, when I left what turned out to be my last newsroom staff writer job, I have relied on freelance assignments from magazines to earn the bulk of my living, or to supplement part-time salaries from IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism.

Some of the most talented investigative reporters in the universe now write solely for magazines after having left newspaper or broadcast newsrooms. Highly obvious names include Jim Steele and Don Barlett of Vanity Fair plus Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker.

No issue of Mother jones, or any other magazine, qualifies as "typical." Still, every issue of Mother iones during the tenure of the current co-editors, Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, has been filled with in-depth investigative and explanatory features. The July-August 2009 issue, for example, contains two feature packages: one about the so-called war on drugs, the other about water conservation.

Charles Bowden, book author and freelance magazine writer, contributed the lead story in the narcotics package. The headline and long deck read: "We Bring Fear: When Reporter Emilio Gutierrez Soto Showed Up at the Border Pleading for Asylum, He Wasn't Just Fleeing the Drug Violence. He Was on the Run From the Biggest Cartel of All - the Mexican Army."

Josh Harkinson, a Mother jones staff writer, reported the water package. The lead story carries the headline, "What's Your Water Footprint? If You Thought That Calculating Your Carbon Impact Made You Feel Guilty, Just Wait..." The secondary story carries the headline, "Paying Through the Hose. Why Is Wasting Water So Damn Cheap?"

Stand-alone stories in the July-August issue include:

* "First Do Harm: The Rules Are Crystal Clear Doctors Can't Take Part in Torture. So Why Won't the Profession Crack Down on Those Who Have?" by freelance writer Justine Sharrock.

* "I Love a Mark in Uniform: Kidnapping. Falsified Documents. Hooters Nights. Meet the Sleazebucket Car Dealers Who Prey on OurTroops," by Stephanie Mencimer, a Mother iones Washington correspondent.

* "Forty-Two Hours, $500, 65 Breakdowns: My Lost Weekend With the Trademark Happy, BathroomBreak Hating, Slightly Spooky Inheritors of est," by Mother Jones staff editor Laura McClure.

Here is a small sampling of other investigative and explanatory features I read from the summer issues of various magazines, a sampling wholly inadequate to fully demonstrate the richness and variety of in-depth journalism in periodicals deserving of attention by IRE members:

* "Weathering the Storm: African Americans and Other Minorities Get Sick and Die Younger Than Whites. Arline Geronimus Offers a Controversial Explanation - The Long-Term Stress of Living in a White-Dominated Society 'Weathers' Blacks," by Ryan Blitstein, Miller-McCune magazine.

* "Jail Break: How Smarter Parole and Probation Can Cut the Nation's Incarceration Rate," by MarkA.R. Kleiman, Washington Monthly.

* "Nuclear War: Inside the Takeover Battle for America's Electricity," by David Whitford, Fortune magazine.

*"The Scarlet Woman of Bentonville: Nearly Three Years After Being Fired by Wal-Mart, Marketer Julie Roehm Faces Her Toughest Rebranding Campaign Ever," by Danielle Sacks, Fast Company magazine.

Weinberg's partial reading list

The Atlantic

Audubon

Bloomberg Markets

BusinessWeek

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Chronicle of Higher Education

Consumer Reports

Fast Company

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Policy

Fortune

Governing

Harper's

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