“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”—Pablo Picasso
If you’re looking to elevate your blog, you should start thinking like an immersive journalist.
Why? Because immersive journalism is engaging, it separates you from most writers, and you’ll create timeless content. But before you get all giddy about immersive journalism, you need to know the dangers of it.
As writers — not journalists — we don’t pay any mind on going too deep in a story. After all, we aren’t beholden to the same rules that journalists are. Immersive journalists like Jon Ronson and Jack London go (or went) deep into stories without getting into too much trouble.
Not true!
Writing immersive non-fiction comes at a price. Ronson feared for his life when he studied psychopaths in The Psychopath Test. And London lived as a destitute for over a year among the starving and poor people of England in The People of the Abyss.
“No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor.”—Jack London in regards to “The People of the Abyss”
Both of these books are gripping to the final page, and that’s a testament to each writer’s reporting. Good immersive journalism does most of the writing for you.
But before you learn more about immersive journalism, let’s talk about the blurred lines of the craft. And nobody blurred the lines more than NBC’s To Catch a Predator.
To Catch a Predator
NBC’s To Catch a Predator first aired in 2004 and gripped American audiences from the very start. The show is about Chris Hansen and the NBC News team luring pedophiles into their camera-filled houses ready to expose their potential misdeeds.
To Catch a Predator entertained millions, but it also creeped many out.
Not only was it disturbing to watch these slimy men interact, but the way Hansen and team went about creating these scenarios seemed very dishonest.
Although the show is a fine example of immersive journalism, it leads to two questions:
- Can you make your own scenarios?
- Was the greater good being served if it meant first creating lies?
Lee Gutkind, author of “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction,” puts it best.
“More than any other literary genre, the creative nonfiction writer must rely on his or her own conscience and sensitivity to others and display a higher mortality and a healthy respect for fairness and justice.”
The Blurred Lines of Immersive Journalism
Let’s stick with To Catch a Predator because it was some damn compelling journalism. However, critics despised it for cheapening journalistic integrity and ethics.
To Catch a Predator broke several rules of the SPJ Code of Ethics, which is the ubiquitous standard that holds journalists accountable. Some of the rules include “being transparent” with your audience or “acting independently.” For example, it would be unethical to receive a bribe from the subject you’re interviewing without informing your audience. In To Catch a Predators case, the show was paying sources under the table to reveal tantalizing information on pedophiles.
This is the antithesis of “being transparent” with audiences and “acting independently.
On an episode of Talk of The Nation with Neal Conan, Chris Hansen attempted to defend NBC’s reported payments of “$100,000 to $150,000 dollars” to their partners on the show, Perverted Justice.
“Well, you know, you have to look at is an entity beyond a source,” said Hansen. “I mean, we pay retired generals, for instance, to give us insight on the Gulf War. We pay retired FBI agents to give us insight into serial killers.”
Conan combatted Hansen’s statements pointing out that there’s a distinct difference in paying individual sources who assist the story with little-to-no bias over advocacy groups like Perverted Justice.
As I’m sure you know, critics have pointed out there’s a difference between paying a general who’s neither, apparently, for or against the war or for or against certain conduct of the war — is dispassionate — and paying an advocacy group, which comes into this with a distinct point of view.
In short, if you wish to explore the avenue of immersive journalism, you must learn the rules first. There are so many untapped resources that bloggers don’t know about. Such as…
- The Freedom of Information Act – Provides the public the right to request access to records from any federal agency. It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government.
- Working with Whistleblowers – A Whistleblower is a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity. Watergate and the Panama Paper scandal were both blown open by whistleblowers. Sure, you can’t just walk out your front door and meet one, however, the more you connect yourself in the world the better the chance you have of a big story falling into your lap.
- Google Data Search and Public Data – It’s not as edgy as the other two resources but no less important. Google data and public data offer a one-stop-shop for relevant information datasets on the topic you’re researching. It’s much easier to use than a Google search because Google better curates the sources.
- Form 990 – This is a form that some tax-exempt organizations like non-profits are required to submit to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a part of their annual reporting. You can request a public disclosure copy and expose to the public the exact inner workings of a non-profit organization.
All this being said, there is one thing you want to try to avoid as an immersive journalist.
Can You Work with Police as an Immersive Journalist?
To Catch a Predator’s close work with police opened up another can of worms. Journalists and writers alike are wary of teaming up with police as it slants your objective in covering a story.
In the same episode of Talk of the Nation, this time Douglas McCollam, a contributing writer for Columbia Journalism Review, grilled NBC’s show.
“[To Catch a Predator] started working with police and I think that all journalists, or anyone interested in journalism, has to be troubled when you see too much close coordination between a news division — or respected news division, like NBC News — and law enforcement,” McCollam stated.
“So it’s not so much a reporting of the news as sort of a creating of a sting operation like the police themselves might do.”
Final Thought on Immersive Journalism
Sure, you don’t have the budget or resources to hire multiple organizations to fuel immersive journalism projects like To Catch a Predator.
But you have more resources than you might think:
You can file a Freedom of Information Act request. This allows you to force the government to release previously unreleased information (unknown to most of the population).
If you follow the SPJ rules, you can blow the lid off of any corruption in your local community. Social media allows you to collaborate with anyone across the world (professors, CEOs, politicians, etc.)
Don’t hold yourself short when writing. Get out there, become an immersive journalist, and most importantly, do it honestly and ethically.