Field Trip #6: The News Center

We trekked down to The News Center Oct. 14 and heard from Steve Andrews, WLFA's Senior Investigative Reporter.

Andrews presented the basic premise that broadcasting and the Internet are the future and that "the newspaper is a dinosaur."

Andrews then walked us through about five of his investigative stories.
Stories can take two hours to turn or 18 months, Andrews said. They all have their own idiosyncrasies.

He started with the Regional Reservoir story. The first thing he did was ask for records. The agency from which he requested the records sent him a very tall stack of documents to make him go away. The workers at the agency probably doubted that Andrews would read the entire stack--but he did. Andrews read through every document and found some valuable information.

This is the first time we had heard from any one of our speakers that agencies may overload reporters with documents in order to discourage them. At this point, we had only heard that agencies may try to wait reporters out or refuse to give them the documents in order to make public records requesting more difficult.

He eventually found out that Hillsborough County taxpayers were not getting what they paid for (in this case, inches of soil in the reservoir).

Andrews said it is very important for reporters to read through all of the records that they request, even if the amount is overwhelming.

"There's no telling what you'll find," he said.

Andrews also talked about the Ronald Larson/ALF/Palmetto Guest Home story and how he was able to gain access to medical records despite the fact that those records are exempt from the Sunshine Laws.

"This was a classic case of total neglect," Andrews said.

He was able to get Ronald Larson's medical records from his public guardian, Ashley Butler. She was so outraged by the neglect of Larson that she agreed to give them to Andrews. Without Butler, Andrews would never have gotten the records.

"She was the key in allowing this to come to fruition," he said.

This is an investigative piece that made a lot of impact and had significant results: the Palmetto Guest Home was shut down, and owner Jackie Doreleen was arrested and stripped of her license. However, no one else was held accountable for the neglect of Larson.

Andrews also spoke about a few other stories. In one of them he had a geologist read through a geological study, which contained a lot of scientific jargon, and got all of the information he needed about it straight from the geologist. This example proved that even if you know nothing about a subject but you have to report on it, you have options other than struggling through confusing documents on your own.

This was a great presentation becuase Andrews walked us through his stories and showed us the final product. This allowed us to understand how the research is done in between the first public records request and the story viewers see on the news.