Feb. 13, Investigative Journalism Symposium

Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa will deliver the keynote address at 6 p.m. on Feb. 13 in Presidents Hall in Franklin Hall at The Media School at Indiana University. Her speech will conclude an afternoon-long symposium featuring award-winning journalists from 60 Minutes, IndyStar, InvestigateTV, ESPN, Louisville Courier Journal, Washington Post, Columbia University and McClatchy.

Full schedule:

1 p.m.: Welcome

• Kathleen Johnston, Arnolt Center director

1:15 – 2:30 p.m.: From the margins: Reporting on the most vulnerable

• Tim Evans, IndyStar
• Daniela Molina, InvestigateTV/ Gray Media
• Henry Schuster, 60 Minutes
• Moderator: Erica Henry, independent journalist

2:45 – 4 p.m.: Fair game: Investigating youth sports

• Chris Buckle, ESPN
• Stephanie Kuzydym, Louisville Courier Journal
• Joe Tone, Washington Post
• Moderator: Mike Wells, Indiana University

4:15 – 5:30 p.m.: Work smarter: Leveraging AI for investigative journalism

• Tyler Dukes, McClatchy
• Brant Houston, University of Illinois
• Jonathan Soma, Columbia University
• Moderator: Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University

6 – 7 p.m.: Keynote

• Maria Ressa, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize and CEO, Rappler, Philippines

The panels and keynote address are free and open to all students, faculty, staff, journalists and the general public, though people are asked to preregister:

Thanks to our sponsors, Scripps Howard Fund, Lumina Foundation, Indy Pro SPJ, the Indiana Citizen, Gray Media, Indiana Broadcasters Association, Free Press Indiana, the Hoosier State Press Association Foundation and Hutton Honors College, and our partners, the Bloomington Press Club, Chalkbeat Indiana, Limestone Post, IndyStar, Indianapolis Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Black Journalists at Indiana University, National Association of Hispanic Journalists at Indiana University, Indianapolis Press Club Foundation, Indiana Capital Chronicle, The Media School at Indiana University, National Sports Journalism Center and the Indiana Daily Student.

For people unable to attend in person, the event will be livestreamed and archived at  https://broadcast.iu.edu/events/investigative-journalism-symposium-2025.html.

See schedules from past symposia: 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Speaker bios:

Maria Ressa

Maria Ressa co-founded Rappler, the top digital only news site that is leading the fight for press freedom in the Philippines. As Rappler’s CEO, Ressa has endured constant political harassment and arrests by the Duterte government, forced to post bail 10 times to stay free. Rappler’s battle for truth and democracy is the subject of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival documentary, “A Thousand Cuts.”

For her courage and journalistic integrity, Ressa has received numerous accolades. In October 2021, she was one of two journalists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

In 2022, she was appointed by the United Nations secretary-general to the Leadership Panel of the Internet Governance Forum and serves as its vice-chair.

She is a professor of practice at the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she leads projects related to artificial intelligence and democracy.

Ressa authored “Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia” and “From Bin Laden to Facebook.” Her most recent book, “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” was released in November 2022 and has been translated into more than 20 languages.

Ressa focuses critical attention on the breakdown of our global information ecosystem and how interconnected communities of action can hold the line to protect democratic values.

Panelists:

Tim Evans

Evans is investigations editor at The Indianapolis Star/IndyStar, where he has worked for more than 25 years. Evans has been involved in multiple investigative projects focused on vulnerable populations ranging from survivors of sexual misconduct, child abuse and prisoner mistreatment to real estate scams, unsolved crimes and shoddy nursing home care. He was a part of the IndyStar team that uncovered the prevalence of sexual abuse in gymnastics, including the crimes of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, as was featured in the Emmy-winning Netflix documentary “Athlete A.” He is a member of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame and recipient of numerous state and national awards, including the IRE Medal, O’Brien Fellowship Award for Impact in Public Service Journalism, University of Missouri Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, Freedom of Expression Award from the Newseum, and the Casey Medal for Meritorious Reporting on Children’s Issues.

Daniela Molina

Molina is a bilingual investigative journalist/producer who has great interest in trafficking and health care stories. Throughout her time at InvestigateTV she has uncovered nursing home abuse, desecration of Black cemeteries, lack of updated emergency medical kits on airlines and has exposed secrecy in military medical malpractice. Daniela Molina also has a Spanish financial consumer segment called “Cuidando Su Billetera” that airs on Gray Media Group’s Telemundo stations. She is also a graduate of Indiana University and holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree for journalism. She is the first graduating class from the IU Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism.

Henry Schuster

Schuster is an award-winning producer for CBS News’ 60 Minutes with assignments including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the border of Ukraine. His piece on the lack of health care for the uninsured in 2008 and work being done by Remote Area Medical prompted Congressional hearings and led to that issue taking center stage during and after the election of Barack Obama. Schuster previously worked at CNN where he won Peabodys, Emmys and duPonts for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the growth of al Qaeda. He is the author of “Hunting Eric Rudolph,” a narrative of manhunt for the Olympic Park bomber.  Schuster graduated from Emory University and Cambridge University and did a fellowship at the University of Chicago. He and his wife, Sandra, live in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Chris Buckle

Buckle, who joined ESPN in 2010, was named vice president, investigative journalism in March 2020, and leads ESPN’s award-winning investigative and enterprise journalism unit. Previously, Buckle was the executive editor of the investigative and enterprise unit. He has managed and edited myriad impactful, cross-platform investigative projects, such as Peabody Award-winners “Spartan Silence” and “NFL at a Crossroads: Investigating a Health Crisis.” His teams have received a 2014 duPont Award, multiple Emmy Awards and the APSE Investigative Award. Before joining ESPN, Buckle had a career in newspapers of all sizes; he joined ESPN from being the personal finance editor at USA Today. He also was an assistant managing editor at The Dallas Morning News. An avid cyclist and triathlete, Buckle graduated from Purdue University and resides in Connecticut.

Stephanie Kuzydym

Kuzydym is a sports enterprise and investigative reporter for The Louisville Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network. For the last decade, Kuzydym’s reporting largely focused on the health and safety of athletes. In “Safer Sidelines,” Kuzydym uncovered the many ways high schools, athletic associations and lawmakers have failed to prepare for the worst-case scenario – sudden death in sports. The project included a first-of-its-kind searchable database of U.S. athlete deaths, as well as a survey and expert assessment of athletic emergency action plans for Kentucky high schools. Kuzydym graduated with a journalism degree from Indiana University in 2012. She has reported for both print and broadcast, in newsrooms in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas, but her favorite newsroom remains the Indiana Daily Student.

Joe Tone

Tone is an editor in the sports department of The Washington Post, where he leads a team of investigative and enterprise reporters whose work probes the intersection of sports with politics, power, money and culture. Before joining The Post in 2019, Tone served as the deputy Washington bureau chief for VICE News Tonight, HBO’s Emmy Award-winning news show. Before that, he spent a decade as a reporter and editor in alternative weekly newspapers, producing award-winning narrative and accountability journalism across a variety of subjects, including sports, politics, immigration and the environment. Tone is also the author of a book, “Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels and the Borderland Dream,” published by One World in 2017 and a finalist for a PEN America award.

Tyler Dukes

Dukes is the lead editor for AI innovation in journalism at McClatchy Media, where he leads a small team of journalists that helps the company’s 30+ local newsrooms responsibly harness data, automation and artificial intelligence to elevate and strengthen their reporting. For nearly a decade, he’s taught undergraduate courses in data journalism at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He was previously an investigative reporter at The News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he specialized in data and computational journalism. In 2017, he completed a fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Prior to joining the N&O, he worked as an investigative reporter on the state politics team at WRAL News, a locally owned television station.

Brant Houston

Houston is a professor and Knight Chair of Investigative Reporting at the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he oversees the award-winning CU-CitizenAccess.org, a newsroom providing watchdog and community news in central Illinois. He previously served as the executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Before joining IRE, he was an investigative reporter at U.S. daily newspapers specializing in data journalism. He has authored five editions of “Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide” and co-authored three editions of “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook.” His latest book is “Changing Models for Journalism: Reinventing the Newsroom.” He is co-founder and board chair of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and co-founder and chair emeritus of the Institute for Nonprofit News. He also has taught investigative reporting in more than 30 countries.

Jonathan Soma

Feb. 29, Investigative Journalism Symposium

Former New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet will deliver the keynote address at 6 p.m. on Feb. 29 in Presidents Hall in Franklin Hall at The Media School at Indiana University. His speech will conclude up an afternoon-long symposium featuring award-winning journalists from WRTV, WBEZ, the Washington Post, ABC News, ESPN, Sports Business Journal, Axios and the Wall Street Journal.

Full schedule:

1 p.m.                    Welcome

• Kathleen Johnston, Arnolt Center director

1:15 – 2:30 p.m.: Keeping it Local: Reporting and Editing Community Investigations

• Kara Kenney, WRTV
• Dan Mihalopoulos, WBEZ
• Delano Massey, Axios
• Moderator: Jason Peifer, Indiana University

2:45 – 4 p.m.: Accountability in Sports: Uncovering Abuse and Misconduct

• Dan Murphy, ESPN
• Rachel Axon, Sports Business Journal
• Molly Hensley-Clancy, Washington Post
• Moderator: Mike Wells, Indiana University

4:15 – 5:30 p.m.: Investigating for the Eye: Data and Visual Storytelling

• James Benedict, Wall Street Journal
• Mark Nichols, ABC News
• Sarah Cahlan, Washington Post
• Moderator: Sara Sidner, CNN

6 — 7 p.m.          Keynote

• Dean Baquet, The New York Times

The panels and keynote address are free and open to all students, faculty, staff, journalists and the general public.

Thanks to our sponsors: Scripps-Howard Fund, the Lumina Foundation, the Hoosier State Press Association Foundation, The Indiana Citizen, Free Press Indiana, the Indiana Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Indiana Broadcasters Association, Hutton Honors College and Gray Television/ InvestigateTV.

And our partners: the Bloomington Press Club, the Limestone Post, the Indy Star, the Indianapolis Chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Black Journalists IU Bloomington Chapter, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at IU the Indianapolis Press Club Foundation, Indiana Capital Chronicle, Chalkbeat Indiana, the National Sports Journalism Center and The Media School at Indiana University.

The event will be live broadcast at:

https://broadcast.iu.edu/events/investigative-journalism-symposium-2024.html

See schedules from past symposia: 2022 and 2023.

Speaker bios:

Dean Baquet

Editor, Local Investigative Fellowship

Baquet now leads The Times Local Investigations Fellowship program that gives journalists the opportunity to produce signature investigative work focused on their state or region that will be published by The Times and made available for free for co-publication by local newsrooms.

He previously served as executive editor for The New York Times from May 2014 until June 2022. During Baquet’s tenure as executive editor, The Times had significant audience and subscriber growth and won 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including two for public service. The Times reaches 100 million readers each month and had 6.7 million subscriptions to its print and digital news products as of the end of 2021.

Before being named executive editor, Baquet was managing editor of The Times. He previously served as Washington bureau chief for the paper from March 2007 to September 2011. Baquet rejoined The Times after several years at the Los Angeles Times, where he was editor of the newspaper since 2005, after serving as managing editor since 2000. Previously, Mr. Baquet had been national editor of The New York Times since July 1995, after having served as deputy metro editor since May 1995. Baquet joined The Times in April 1990 as a metro reporter.

Before joining The Times, he reported for the Chicago Tribune from December 1984 to March 1990, and before that, for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans for nearly seven years. While at the Chicago Tribune, Baquet served as associate metro editor for investigations and was chief investigative reporter, covering corruption in politics and the garbage-hauling industry. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in March 1988 when he led a team of three in documenting corruption in the Chicago City Council, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 in the investigative reporting category. Baquet has also received numerous local and regional awards.

Baquet majored in English at Columbia University from 1974 to 1978.

Panelists:

Kara Kenney

WRTV Investigates’ Kara Kenney fights for what’s right and holds those in power accountable. Her investigations into government fraud and waste have resulted in several changes to Indiana state law including more accountability for how schools report bullying incidents, radon testing in schools, as well as a law that requires more transparency in school superintendent contracts. Her investigations have earned her 15 Emmys, the Richard Dreihaus Investigative Award from the Better Government Association, an Edward R. Murrow award, and numerous awards from the Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists.

In 2022, Kara won the Spectrum Award from the Indiana Broadcasters Association for her investigation “Crisis on the Creek,” as well as 1st Place for Investigative Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2018, she was named Indiana’s Best Reporter by the Associated Press and Journalist of the Year in 2012 by the Indiana Society of Professional Journalists. Before joining WRTV in 2009, Kenney worked in Fort Meyers, Florida, South Bend, Wausau, Wisconsin. Kenney is a 2001 graduate of Indiana University’s School of Journalism.

Dan Mihalopoulos

Dan is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team. Since joining the station in 2018, Dan has won three National Edward R. Murrow Awards, including the 2022 investigative reporting prize, for a series of stories on sexual abuse of lifeguards at Chicago’s beaches and pools. The “Buried Secrets” series prompted criminal charges, reforms and the resignations of the Park District’s chief executive and board president. Those stories also won first prize in the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Investigative Reporting.
Dan is a three-time winner of the Chicago Headline Club’s Watchdog Award for Excellence in Public Interest Reporting and was awarded the Headline Club’s 2018 Anne Keegan Award. His work also earned first prize for investigative reporting in the Education Writers Association’s national awards in 2014. Dan joined WBEZ from the Chicago Sun-Times, and previously was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago News Cooperative (Chicago section of the New York Times) and the Chicago Tribune.

Delano Massey

Delano Massey is the Managing Editor of Local at Axios, where he joined in 2022 to spearhead the company’s expansion into a dozen new markets, including Detroit, Raleigh, and Seattle. Before joining Axios, Massey held a prominent position at CNN as a supervising producer, overseeing the Washington-based producers, reporters, and writers covering crucial topics like the Justice Department, legal and criminal issues, the Supreme Court, the Department of Homeland Security, and immigration. During a pivotal time marked by a racial reckoning, he collaborated with CNN’s President Jeff Zucker to create the network’s Race & Equality team. Previously, Massey served as a deputy news director in Chicago for The Associated Press, where he supervised all-format coverage across the central United States. Additionally, as a leader of the Race & Ethnicity team, he facilitated the telling of several impactful stories that might have otherwise gone untold, including an award-winning coverage of the Red Summer of 1919 and the anniversary of the Little Rock Nine. Massey was recognized for his outstanding achievements and was listed among the Most Influential People of African Descent in 2021 and selected as a Poynter fellow for the 2023 Media Transformation Challenge.

Jason Peifer (moderator)

Jason Peifer, Ph.D., is an associate professor of journalism in the Media School at Indiana University. With professional experience in public radio, Peifer teaches on topics related to the foundations of journalism, news literacy, media ethics, public opinion, and satirical news/political entertainment. His research explores facets of citizens’ uncertainty about and trust in public institutions—especially as related to journalism practices, non-traditional news sources, and individuals’ perceptions of the news media’s importance. Some of Peifer’s most recent work includes examining the efficacy of different forms of journalistic transparency and cross-national perceptions of news and social media’s value/importance within a high-choice digital media landscape. His scholarship has been published in a variety of outlets, including the Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Media Psychology, Computers in Human Behavior, Communication Methods & Measures, and the International Journal of Communication.

Dan Murphy

Dan Murphy is an investigative and enterprise reporter at ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2014 and his initial focus in covering was college sports. His reporting has won numerous awards, including a Peabody Award and the IRE Sports Investigation of the Year. He is the co-author of “Start By Believing” about the women who brought former gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar to justice. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has a master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

Rachel Axon

Rachel Axon covers the Olympics for Sports Business Journal. She is a veteran sports reporter who has spent more than 15 years in newspapers, focusing on investigations, the Olympics and college sports. She spent more than a decade at USA TODAY, where she covered the past five Olympic Games. She previously covered the University of Florida for the Orlando Sentinel and prep sports for the StarNews in Wilmington, N.C. Her work has finished in the top 10 in the Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest more than 10 times, with two wins for investigative and another for feature writing, as well as being honored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Goldsmith Prize and The Association of Business Journalists.

Molly Hensley-Clancy

Molly Hensley-Clancy is a sports investigations reporter for The Washington Post. Her reporting on sexual and emotional abuse in women’s soccer won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award in 2022. Previously, she worked for BuzzFeed News, where she spent time on the presidential campaign trail during the 2020 election as a national politics reporter. She is a native of Minneapolis.

Mike Wells (moderator)

Mike Wells joined the Media School as a full-time faculty member in the summer of 2022 after spending the previous three springs as an adjunct in the Media School and nine years with ESPN as the Indianapolis Colts’ NFL Nation reporter. Wells wrote for ESPN.com, appeared on ESPN’s SportsCenter and NFL Live, and was a frequent voice on ESPN Radio, where he will continue as a fill-in host. He also contributed to golf and NBA coverage for ESPN.com. Wells covered the NBA for 10 years—first the Minnesota Timberwolves for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and then the Indiana Pacers for the Indianapolis Star. He also covered the Minnesota Vikings and the University of Minnesota men’s basketball team while also filling in on the paper’s coverage of Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League while at the Pioneer Press. Wells started his journalism career working for The Associated Press in Seattle in January 2000.

James Benedict

James Benedict is a graphics reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York, where he specializes in data analysis and interactive design across a variety of topics. He works closely with the national, economics, and investigations desks to create ambitious visual journalism.
He was a member of the WSJ team that won the 2023 Pulitzer for Investigative reporting for a series of stories that exposed government regulator’s financial trades. James focused on making this complex topic approachable to a general audience. His work has been recognized by the Pulitzer Prizes, NY Press Club, Society for News Design, Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, and the White House Correspondents’ Association. James joined the Journal in 2018 after graduating from Indiana University.

Sarah Cahlan

Sarah Cahlan is a senior video reporter and documentary filmmaker at The Washington Post. As a founding member of the Visual Forensics team, which was announced in 2020, she contributed to its first stories, developing the style and tone of its video investigations. She adds clarity, creativity and vision to stories that reveal new findings and provide further context to complex events. Her projects span a gamut of formats, coverage areas and reporting techniques, and include the police clearing of Lafayette Square in 2020, which won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award; the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, which was part of The Post’s package that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public service; and the hourly coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Sarah joined The Post in 2019 as a video editor producing video fact checks and stylized animated series for The Fact Checker. She is a former National Association of Hispanic Journalists fellow at NBC News and has worked as an associate producer and researcher at independent documentary production companies in New York.

Mark Nichols

Mark Nichols is a senior manager of Data Journalism for ABC News, developing data-driven investigative stories and projects for ABC’s World News Tonight, Nightline, Good Morning America, Live, and digital content for abcnews.com. He also works with the data team that serves ABC’s Owned Television Station affiliates in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham and Fresno. Nichols previously was a data journalist on the national desk of USA TODAY. He has worked as a data specialist for the digital reporting team at WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was the computer-assisted reporting coordinator for more than 20 years at The Indianapolis Star, where he started his journalism career in 1980.

Sara Sidner (moderator)

Sara Sidner is a co-anchor of CNN News Central and a national correspondent. She began her career with CNN in India, where she headed coverage of South Asia. During her first year there, she reported live during the deadly terrorist attack in Mumbai. In the Middle East, Sidner was part of the team that won a Peabody for CNN’s coverage of the Arab Spring. Recently she helped lead CNN’s coverage of the protests after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as well as the coronavirus outbreak. Sidner delivered the Arnolt Center’s symposium keynote speech in 2022 and is a member of the board.