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The Reporter

9 courses, in the order they are meant to be taken. You can start anywhere, and they build.

How to read the course codes
  • -00 means start here.
  • -01, -02 are steps on one path, in order.
  • A letter (-T1, -P2) marks a track. Tracks run in parallel: take any track you like, in any order, without taking the others.
  • -99 is the capstone. Take it last.

Start here

  1. REPORT-00

    Reporter 00: What a Beat Is

    Start here. Everything else in this series assumes it.

    A beat is a territory you hold, not a story you are assigned. How to map one, how to listen in a community before you need anything from it, how to keep a source who has nothing for you today, and how to notice an emerging issue while it is still boring. The start of the Reporter track, written for people who already report.

The path

  1. REPORT-01

    Reporter 01: Public Records

    Step 1 on the single path through this series.

    Asking for records, and what to do when they say no. Who is covered and who is not, what counts as a record, writing a request that cannot be misread, fees and the public-interest waiver, exemptions and the answer that refuses to say whether a record exists, reading a denial, and the appeal. Federal FOIA as the spine, Indiana as the worked example, and your own state as the homework.

  2. REPORT-02

    Reporter 02: Reading Somebody Else's Report

    Step 2 on the single path through this series.

    A beat reporter is handed reports constantly, and most of what goes wrong happens between the executive summary and the table underneath it. Worked end to end on one real 84-page document: who published it and what they do, an anatomy, a summary sentence chased back to its table, what a data definition changes, how to resolve an endnote, and a publisher that writes down its own limits. Sits directly on top of How to Read a Number.

  3. REPORT-03

    Reporter 03: Interviewing People Who Did Not Seek This

    Step 3 on the single path through this series.

    Talking to someone who did not choose to be in a story: what informed consent means when you are not a researcher, what trauma does to an account and why that is not lying, giving a source control over pace and order, minors and guardians and who is actually consenting, what you may promise, when to stop, and what you owe after publication. Written for reporters, not clinicians.

  4. REPORT-04

    Reporter 04: Verification on Deadline

    Step 4 on the single path through this series.

    What an hour actually buys. Breaking a claim into checkable pieces, finding the original rather than the copy, establishing source, date, location, and motivation, corroborating with something genuinely independent, and looking for the evidence that would prove you wrong. Ends where the track's whole argument lands: the decision not to publish, treated as a professional act rather than a failure.

  5. REPORT-05

    Reporter 05: The Law You Work Inside

    Step 5 on the single path through this series.

    A map, not legal advice. What a defamation claim actually requires and where the actual-malice standard came from, the four privacy torts and which one a reporter really meets, why how you gathered something is judged separately from what you published, recording consent, shield protections and their limits, publishing material somebody else obtained, and the specific moments to stop and call a lawyer. Federal law and leading cases as the spine, Indiana as the worked example, your own state as the homework.

  6. REPORT-06

    Reporter 06: Solutions Journalism, and What It Is Not

    Step 6 on the single path through this series.

    A method, not a mood. Rigorous reporting on responses to problems: the four qualities that define it, the two things it is constantly confused with, how to find a response worth reporting, what counts as evidence of results, why the limitations section is the part that makes it journalism, and how it sits beside accountability reporting on a working beat rather than replacing it.

  7. REPORT-07

    Reporter 07: The Pitch, and the Shapes a Story Can Take

    Step 7 on the single path through this series.

    How to pitch an enterprise project so an editor can say yes, and how to choose the form a story takes for a reason rather than a habit. The five parts of a pitch, what a refusal actually tells you, matching a shape to the question rather than to the material, and what a newsletter, a social-first piece, and a short video each demand that the others do not.

Finish here

  1. REPORT-99

    Reporter 99: Capstone, Report the Beat

    Capstone. Take it last: it works by using what the rest of the series taught you.

    Run the whole method once, on a beat you choose. One records request filed and followed. One public data report read against its own tables. Two interviews conducted to the standard the track sets. One quick-turn story and one enterprise pitch. And a written note of what you could not confirm, which is the piece of work this capstone is actually graded on.