ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: IN THE LION’S MOUTH: ADVOCACY AND INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY Degree candidate: Debra A. Schwartz Degree and year: Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Professor Steve Barkin Philip Merrill College of Journalism This study explores what might qualify investigative reporting about the environment as advocacy. It applies a phenomenological approach to gathering and sorting data, which resulted in the identification of several essences of investigative reporting about the environment. This study further analyzes data using grounded theory. According to grounded theory, categories emerge from interview data and, through a process of reduction, produce a mid -range theory. Adhering to method and theory, this work identifies a new kind of investigative reporting the author terms integrated investigative reporting. It appears environment reporters are leading the way on this emerging form. Some in vestigative reporters writing about the environment go two steps beyond the approach endorsed by Investigative Reporters & Editors, known as The Paul Williams Way. A pioneering finding, those steps have roots deep in phenomenology, a process of meaning mak ing dating back to Aristotle. In that respect, the use of phenomenological process seems to point to a constructivist approach taking hold in news reporting today. This dissertation also reveals that personal narrative is fast becoming a component of investigative reporting, particularly in the form of online diaries. Several more bridges also surfaced in this study. One connects professional and academic research approaches. Another demonstrates an innovative approach to a literature review, which the au thor calls a literature synthesis . Another shows how to combine objectivist grounded theory with Charmaz’s interactionist approach to grounded theory, which study participants described doing in their investigations. This writing refutes the professional idea that training investigative reporters in how to work an environment story requires that more attention be paid to the scope of the story than the process of story collection. Rather, this study reveals that the study participants tease out scope by g oing two steps beyond standard investigative reporting practice. Challenges to some tenets of journalism appear in this study as well, including Lippmann’s notion that “there is but one kind of writing possible in a world as diverse as ours. It is a unit y of method…” and Kovach and Rosenstiel’s notion that journalism of assertion is weakening the methodology of verification journalists have developed. IN THE LION’S MOUTH: ADVOCACY AND INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY by Debra A. Schwartz Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2004 Advisory Committee: Professor Steve Barkin, Chair Professor Katherine McAdams Professor Judith Paterson Professor William Starosta Professor Andrew Wolvin ©Copyright by Debra A. Schwartz 2004 for Daniel Cohen who convinced me between the Illinois -Indiana border and the Ohio -Pennsylvania border that I could do this now ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Rolling between states on Highway 80/90 in daylight on the way to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in August of 1999, Daniel Cohen gave me the kind of talk he said he would give to his son and daughter if they would only give him the chance. Daniel, recently divorced, was moving from Chicago to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania in the lush Delaware Water Gap to live in the family’s house, which his father was leaving to move Wes t. I was living in Chicago, my home town, and thinking about moving to Washington, D.C., where it was easier to find work as a reporter. There for two weeks, I had returned to Chicago only to decide three days later to go back and look for a staff job rath er than freelance work in the nation’s capital. Daniel, whom I had known for a while, was going my way and offered me a lift as far as Harrisburg. Somewhere just past the Illinois -Indiana border he asked where I would like my career to take me, or someth ing like that. We were silent while I dug for an honest answer, then broke the silence with, “I want to teach at a university or college.” The long-time independent businessman asked me why I did not do it now. I listed all the reasons why. “You’re not thinking like an entrepreneur!” he said, which really got to me because he knew I’d been self -employed pretty much since age 23 – about 17 years at that point. That is when I began to listen to Daniel with my heart. Shortly thereafter he pulled over on the si de of the road, went around to the back of the car, retrieved a legal pad, and shoved it in my hands along with a pen. Back in the car he asked me question after question. I wrote them down, discussing them and making lists as the answers came. By dark I had the equivalent of a five page business plan charting my next move: to get my doctoral degree in journalism now and move my iii career along. It was my first business plan ever. From the moment I arrived in Washington, D.C., that August, I began working it. I even visited the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park to see what I thought. I thought the rooms there were too dark, but I accepted an assistantship there anyway when it was offered the following April, thinking: location, location, location. As of March 2004, I am in the final stages of that business plan, hoping to get hired by a school matching the profile I set in writing while rolling down Highway 80/90. That school and I have found each other, but I have not yet been hired. All of this makes me wonder where I’d be now if I had followed my father’s urging to write a business plan for myself when I began freelancing. Many times he sat down with me to help me think things through, just like Daniel did. We would sit at the kitchen table, one or the other of us with a legal pad and pen, and we would try to work something up. But I could never commit to the plans we had outlined. They never felt whole. I now know they lacked an appeal to my soul. I would slip them in a dra wer or put them on my bulletin board and that’s where they would stay – inactive. That this one had come together so spontaneously and neatly I took as an omen. This one spoke to me from somewhere deep within, and I knew, somehow, that if I just kept liste ning to that still small voice I would get where I needed to go. I am where I need to be because of the talk Daniel Cohen gave to me instead of his children that day. I am also there because from an early age my father told me success is failure turned inside out, my mother listened to me with her heart instead of her head, and my sister taught me to try another way whenever something didn’t work the way I thought iv it should. Also in that landscape is my Aunt Phylis, who gave me counsel when I asked, and not when I did not ask; Aunt Libbie, age 97 as of this writing, who lifts my soul with her amazing good cheer; and my academic guru, JoAnn Valenti, who bugged me for years to get my doctoral degree because, she said, the academy needs me. A pillar to lean on since I started at the University of Maryland, JoAnn, who retired last year from Brigham Young University as professor of mass communications, one day called me a high -maintenance student, a quality I said I had picked up from students I had taught at Columbia College in Chicago and DeVry University in the Chicago suburbs. JoAnn carries a whip in her back pocket and has used it on me when necessary. In the company of angels is Todd Steven Burroughs for his wisdom, encouragement, and willingness to read the first drafts of every piece this effort (the first chapter took about 12 passes) and lay a ruler down on each page to check the margins for conformity to publication standards; Kathy McAdams, who has stood by me since the beginning, for her tolerance, flexibility, and the gift of her time – which she gave unselfishly in the way of a dedicated mentor; Sol Bernstein for helping me come up with the label integrated investigative reporting, and Kent Silberman, from whom I am sure I have learned more than I realize. There are parts of this dissertation that Judith Paterson will recognize as the fruits of her labors as much as mine. They are in the stories I tell about myself. Judith has helped me be brave, helped me face myself without fear of what I might discover, and put it in writing. She is a hearty talent, professor, and example to follow, as is Bill Starosta, a gentle giant who instead of taking offense when I said to him, matter -of- v factly, “Why would anyone study intercultural communication?” set out to open my mind with his parables, questions, and challenges, and succeeded. He also spent time talking with me about how one might make a difference in this cockeyed world, as did Andrew Wolvin, who gave me the opportunity to investigate and play a part in developing the emerging conversation about intercultural listening.