William March: The Tampa Tribune

William March, a staff writer for The Tampa Tribune, came to class Oct. 7 and spoke with us about the investigative reporting involved when covering politics.

"When you cover politics, you cover everything that politicians talk about," March said. "They talk about everything."

To cover politics, the reporter must essentially be a jack of all trades.

You don't necessarily have to have a lot of knowledge, he said, but when you cover politics, you cover everything from felonies to high finance.

The key to investigative reporting is to "follow the money."

March detailed how he broke an investigative story about a group of contributions made to President Clinton's campaign in 1997 from employees at a Miami company.

To start, March looked into Mark Jimenez, one of the largest contributors to the Democratic National Committee. Then, he found out what corporations Jimenez is involved with. March was able to do this using two resources: Florida Corporate Records from the Florida Department of State Division of Corporations and Money Line. Money Line is the official repository for contributions to federal campaigns (the House, the Senate, Presidential).

March proceeded to find out about the individual contributions made by the employees of the corporation. March looked into the donation background of the employees and narrowed the list down to 15 employees.

March was able to access National Comprehensive Reports, which provide information about a person's house or car ownership, deed transfers, licenses he or she holds to hunt and fish, possible Florida accidents and his or her name, address and listed phone number. These reports come from Auto Track and are expensive to access.

March eventually came up with the question: Why did these employees, many of whom have never contributed to a campaign, decide to give $1,000 to Clinton's campaign?

After all of his research and investigating, March found out that these employees were bribed by the CEO of the company they work for. Some of these employees were registered Republican and some were not even registered to vote at all.

March also told us about Campaign Finance Database on the Florida Division of Elections Web site. It allows someone to search for people who have contributed money to a campaign and the amount contributed.

OpenSecrets.org is another Web site he mentioned, which analyzes candidates and the contributions people make to the campaigns.

"This is the kind of records checking that you will have to do if you cover politics," March said.

All of the information March gave us was beneficial to those of us who want to cover politics and those of us who want to cover anything in depth. His detailed breakdown of the investigative story he wrote for The Tampa Tribune was also very helpful. It allowed us to see just how much research and connecting the dots goes into a single investigative story.