Today, Concordia launches the Institute for Investigative Journalism, led by Patti Sonntag, a former managing editor in The New York Times’ News Services division.
The institute is the first of its kind in Canada. Headquartered in Concordia’s Department of Journalism, it’s the host institution for the National Student Investigative Reporting Network (NSIRN), which connects major media outlets with journalism students and faculty from across Canada to investigate and report on large-scale public interest stories.
“This is the blueprint for a new model of journalism that serves the public interest through cooperation, not competition,” says Sonntag, a Concordia alumna (BA 00).
Media partners on the current project include Global News, The National Observer, and the Toronto Star. Higher education partners on the Fall 2018-19 project include Carleton, Humber College, Mount Royal University, Ryerson University, University of King’s College, the University of Regina and the University of British Columbia.
These unprecedented collaborations are a new model for fostering investigative reporting in Canada, and addressing news poverty in many regions — a result of lost advertising revenue for local and regional media.
According to Sonntag, this has far-reaching consequences as industry and government go unchecked in sparsely populated areas that are now out of the reach of many journalists.
“Ours is a radical new approach to a national problem,” she says. “It is fitting that the Institute is being led by Concordia, which has a long history of collaborative, experiential learning.”
Proven success
The launch of the Institute for Investigative Journalism is the culmination of a partnership between the Department of Journalism and Sonntag that began when she became Concordia’s first journalist-in-residence in 2016. She was asked to engage students in a large-scale investigation in the public interest.
Sonntag’s first project took a small cohort of journalism students to Baie-Comeau to investigate the effect an infestation was having on Quebec’s forestry industry. More than 10 months of reporting and data gathering led to the publication of the in-depth investigation in The Walrus.
Soon afterward, Sonntag was awarded the Michener-Deacon Fellowship for Journalism Education, for a project that involved creating an investigative student network.
Through that award, she learned of the work of Toronto Star reporter and Ryerson instructor Robert Cribb, who had received a Michener the previous year for a similar project, and had been working on building a network for some time.
They teamed up, and their combined momentum led to the network’s pilot national project, “The Price of Oil,” which united dozens of reporters, editors, students and faculty across Canada to expose negligence in the oil and gas industry, resulting in more than 70 publications and broadcasts to date.
Supported by the Corporate Mapping Project, “The Price of Oil” earned several national and international awards and nominations, including an honourable mention from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which grants one of this country’s most prestigious reporting awards, the Canadian Hillman Prize.