The Marshall Project is launching a new program called “Investigate This!” Empowering local communities with criminal justice journalism. We want to connect journalists and other newsrooms to resources and data to help them create powerful, original stories that have the potential to have a significant local impact.
Our team of reporters and editors have created a Story Toolkit that includes reporting resources, downloads, multimedia assets, shareable illustrations, Freedom of Information Act guidance, expert resources, style guides and more. Each toolkit will include live webinars and video presentations to provide insight into the nuances and opportunities of the criminal justice system, incarcerated individuals, and their loved ones.
Investigate it! Toolkit launched to help local newsrooms examine:
Sharing our work has always been a guiding principle of the Marshall Project. Since our founding ten years ago, we have worked with hundreds of media organizations. Investigate it! Builds on this philosophy and our experience localizing FBI crime statistics, American Rescue Plan Act funding, and national data sets on banned books in prisons. These reporting resources are designed to be useful to all news outlets and investigate! There will also be a trial of audio content, including newscasts, which will be shared with local radio stations.
“We're building this set of data sets and reporting guidelines for local newsrooms to save them time so they can focus on digging into the criminal justice trends and issues that impact their communities,” said Michael Rice, partner and engagement associate at The Marshall Project. Sher Bierman said.
In addition to the toolkit, The Marshall Project has established a robust resource center for journalists covering criminal justice, which includes a style guide for using human-centered language when reporting on incarceration. An overarching goal is to help newsrooms regularly include the voices of people in prison or formerly incarcerated, as well as their friends and family. We'll also provide a sample public records request and tips from journalists on how to track down those most familiar with the inner workings of the system, including background experts who can put complex material into context.
Ahead of the national election, we plan to release a new toolkit for analyzing FBI crime data to combat election disinformation and localize findings from our political surveys of more than 30,000 incarcerated people across the country. In addition to this, The Marshall Project will regularly release new toolkits. We have also established a series of videos and articles about our style, standards and sourcing considerations when reporting criminal justice cases.
The program is overseen by a team with deep experience in local journalism, community engagement reporting, data journalism and media partnerships. Michelle Bierman is the author of Investigate This! 》The main person in charge. She is a former public radio news director who spent more than a decade managing small local newsrooms with limited resources.
Ruth Baldwin is our Editorial Director, and her experience in creating and overseeing the Marshall Project partner strategy helped us conceive and inform Investigate This! 》Provide information. Our data editor David Eads led key contributions from data team members Weihua Li and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, as well as product manager Ana Graciela Méndez. Their experiments in the field of generative journalism highlight the potential of this endeavor.
Nicole Lewis is our Engagement Editor, where she oversees the Marshall Project’s national and local engagement reporting initiative, where she works to ensure our reporting resonates and is understood by those most affected by the justice system . Elan Ullendorff created the visual framework for Investigate This!. Aithne Feay, Gabe Isman and Ryan Murphy created the online experience. Our style and standards editor Ghazala Irshad provided language and framework guidance, and our senior storytelling editor Raghuram Vadarevu oversaw the creation of each kit's visual assets.
Learn more about investigating this! Please contact Michelle Billman at survey@themarshallproject.org.