Investigative Reporting Workshop

IRW was founded by professors Charles Lewis, a national investigative journalist for more than 30 years, and Wendell Cochran, a longtime business reporter and editor; the publishing of original content began in the spring of 2009. Lewis, a MacArthur Fellow and former producer for "60 Minutes,” founded four nonprofits in Washington, including the Center for Public Integrity, and has written six books, including “The Buying of the President 2004.” In 2018, Lewis won the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. Lewis retired as executive editor in 2022.

Lynne Perri, former deputy managing editor for graphics and photography at USA TODAY and a former reporter and editor at The Tampa Tribune, is managing editor. Perri is a journalist-in-residence and senior lecturer in the School of Communication at American University. She teaches reporting, journalism ethics and visual journalism, and has led workshops for The Washington Post, the Knight Center for International Journalists, the American Press Institute, and the Society for News Design.

John Sullivan, a Pulitzer Prize winner while at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post, is a senior editor and currently serves as interim executive editor. He is also as associate editor for the Post's investigations team, and runs an investigative practicum at the graduate level inside the Post's newsroom. Sullivan was a senior lecturer and assistant director of Medill Watchdog and on the journalism faculty at Northwestern University, after working for nearly a decade at The Inquirer where his assignments included covering the war in Iraq, state government, city hall, science and health.

Aarushi Sahejpal is data editor at IRW, adjunct professor of data journalism at American University’s School of Communication, and a data reporter on The Accountability Project at The Center for Public Integrity. Sahejpal is an alum of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Biden-Harris Administration, The COVID Tracking Project, and a former intern at IRW.

Pamela Roberts joined the Investigative Reporting Workshop as development director in 2020. Roberts previously raised philanthropic support for Imagination Stage, the National Press Foundation, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, and others. Michael Laing joined IRW in late 2022 as financial manager after 25 years in client solutions at The Washington Post.

The model for the Workshop is the Children's Television Workshop, which originally was created to produce “Sesame Street,” but became an incubator and innovator for much of educational television.

The Workshop Advisory Board consists of 12 journalists from five continents.[1]

When The Investigative Reporting Workshop launched The Accountability Project in 2019, the goal was to provide one place for researchers and journalists to search across a wide catalog of previously siloed public data at once. Our collections include a wide variety of data on money in politics, nonprofit organizations, government spending and several other topics – all accessible from a single search. In 2022, IRW transitioned leadership of the project to the Center for Public Integrity, but IRW staff and interns continue to work on TAP.

Each quarter the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. requires every bank in the nation to submit detailed reports about its financial condition. This data is public. The Investigative Reporting Workshop downloads the data files from the FDIC website to extract several key variables of bank performance.

The online, multimedia project, Investigating Power showcases more than 50 hours of interviews with distinguished journalists. This project documents “moments of truth” in contemporary U.S. history and the careers of notable journalists since the 1950s. It is a part of a larger project and book, “The Future of Truth,” by Charles Lewis, the former "60 Minutes" producer.

In January 2018, Investigating Power was reworked with a new look and additional content. The update added educator resources for both the middle and high school level and the undergraduate/post-secondary level.

The Workshop has an ongoing partnership with the PBS program Frontline. Productions include "Flying Cheap" a documentary about the impact of the major carriers’ reliance on regional airlines and their pilots, which won a Screen Actors Guild Award for writing; a follow-up, “Flying Cheaper,” a follow-up about the impact of outsourcing maintenance on planes; and “Lost in Detention,” a documentary that chronicled the administration’s enforcement policy, which has deported 400,000 people annually the last two years and put thousands in detention centers with legal representation, often splitting up families in which the children are U.S. citizens. In 2012 and 2013, the Workshop also co-produced "Big Sky, Big Money," which chronicles campaign finance in Montana; "The Digital Campaign," about the 2012 presidential race; and "Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria," a look at the pervasive problem of drug resistant infestions in hospitals.

In 2017, The Workshop collaborated with Frontline to produce "Poverty, Politics, and Profit: The Housing Crisis."

In 2018, The Workshop co-produced "Blackout in Puerto Rico," with PBS Frontline and NPR. It aired on PBS stations across the country and online.

Executive Editor Chuck Lewis talks about how meaningful it was to win an award for journalistic independence.

In March 2012, the Workshop was named a “finalist” in the Business/Economics Reporting category of the Scripps Howard Awards for the project, "What Went Wrong: The Betrayal of the American Dream." The series, spearheaded by Kat Aaron as project editor, with reporters Jim Steele and Don Barlett as well as contributions from the staff, focused on how policies in Washington and on Wall Street have hurt Americans for far longer than the most recent recession.

In March 2010, the Workshop's Wendell Cochran, Matt Waite, Richard Mullins, Lynne Perri and Lisa Hill were recognized for "BankTracker," in the category of "Best in Business Online" for "Creative Use of the Online Medium, small websites, 2009."

Executive Editor Charles Lewis and Hilary Niles, a former Workshop intern, wrote "Measuring Impact: The art, science and mystery of nonprofit news assessment," which has received a 2013 Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in the "Research about Journalism" category.

In 2010, the Workshop, along with Frontline, received a Society of Professional Journalists award in the Television category for its “Flying Cheap: Regional airlines cut cost of flying, at what price?” documentary. The Sigma Delta Chi Awards for Excellence in Journalism recognize distinguished service to the American people and the profession of journalism through outstanding accomplishments.

The Workshop operates under the 501(c)(3) designation of American University.

As a nonprofit newsroom and training ground for future journalists, the Investigative Reporting Workshop is funded primarily by grants from private foundations and donations from individuals. The Workshop does not seek nor accept contributions from corporations, labor unions, governments, political parties or advocacy organizations. The Workshop will accept corporate matches to their employees’ charitable contributions. IRW is a tax-exempt organization; donations to the organization are tax-deductible.

IRW has received grants or contributions from the following institutional funders over the last five years: