Jo Becker of the New York Times offers her secrets to success

MANHATTAN - For Jo Becker of the New York Times, knowing the ins and outs of the public record law is key to successful investigative reporting.

“I would recommend that familiar[izing] yourself right away, read the law of whatever state you're in ... and understand what is public and fight for it all the time,” she said.

According to Becker, not knowing the public record law is the fastest way to get brushed off by officials.

“If you know the law, you’re in a lot better position to cite it,” she said. “If people think that you know the law, they’re not going to, as a default, deny you. They hope to make you go away that way. You want to show them that you know what you’re talking about, you know what’s public in that state.”

Also, don’t automatically assume sources aren’t going to want to talk, she said.

“I think a lot of reporters make the mistake in assuming that everybody is going to not want to talk to you or stonewall you,” she said of working on her Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series on former Vice President Dick Cheney. “[Ask yourself,] what buttons do I need to push to get them to talk to me? I spend more time thinking about it than I do about the actual questions. You try to think about what would make someone talk to [you.]”

Becker, who is now an investigative reporter for the Times, previously worked for the Washington Post, the St. Petersburg Times, the Concord Monitor and the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado.

For Becker, getting sources to open up about Cheney and his unprecedented amount of power as vice president meant not taking sides.

“[It’s] not going in there with sort of guns a blazing, “ she said. “[I said,] I really want to understand, sit down and tell me.”
Becker also took advantage of a growing wedge between some of the administration and Cheney’s lawyer in to get people to talk, she said.

Even doing so, the series received positive feedback from both sides of the Bush/Cheney camp after the series was published.

“I got really universally complimented by people within the Bush administration, with a few exceptions,” she said. “But generally speaking, [I got] widespread compliments from a people who, A, thought the president was being underserved; and B, think Cheney is like a hero.”

Becker and her fellow reporter for the project, Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, received a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for the Cheney series.

Another strategy Becker employs is staying organized. After conducting more than 200 interviews for the Cheney series, Becker had to come up with an organizational system or drown in a surplus of information.

She used a computer program Lotus to organize the interviews into three categories – interviews, background information and anecdotes. After organizing the facts, she could sort through it and determine what was most important to the story.
Becker’s last secret to success? It sounds simple, but according to her, it makes all the difference – tell the truth.

“I always tell people, ‘I’m going to do this story with or without you,’” she said. “My promise to people in that situation is you’re not going to be surprised. I don’t think people should be surprised at what [they] see in the newspaper – not [if they’re] a target of an investigation."

She makes it a point to inform subjects, especially those of investigative pieces, of her intentions and her desire to hear their side of the story, she said.

“You don’t even want to lie to people,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”