Jamie Grey

With a grant from the Online News Association, I produced a multi-story project with student reporters where we combined investigative reporting with social media and quickturn deadlines. KOMU 8’s Target 8 investigative team worked to innovate both the delivery of deep dive news reporting and the interaction with viewers before, during and after our news reports aired. Our goal through Target 8 Town Square was to take topical, usually breaking or developing, news stories and report as deeply and quickly as possible by utilizing both new social media and traditional investigative reporting techniques like records requests and data analysis. We used Facebook live as a method of connecting with viewers within the first weeks of it becoming available for pages to use. We did all of our reporting in a 48-hour timeframe, starting the clock when we first reported a breaking, spot or daily news story. One example of the method involved investigative reporting after children were found playing with a bag of meth on a daycare playground. This project won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Innovation in Journalism in 2017.