William March

Dedication and an inner drive seem to be the required traits to become an effective investigative reporter. The stories that Mr. March talked to us about seemed to require endless hours of research and fact-checking. The simple fact that he had to travel to Miami to research a person’s voting habits further exemplifies the hard work it takes to get a story. Mr. March not only gave us great websites and tools to use when unearthing a story, but he drove it home as to how to use the research tools in your writing through his past experience. For example, the Autotrack system is a tool that I would be able to use on countless stories. In fact, the system would be extremely beneficial to my public figure biography. Furthermore, I was completely blown away by the amazing intuition and enterprise put into creating the Future Tech story. Furthermore, the fact that a story such as the Future Tech story could bring about criminal charges furthers the idea that I have picked the right profession to help enact change in society.
The major difference that I saw in the presentation by Mr. March in comparison to other presenters or other classes that I have taken is the fact that he did an excellent job of tying together the research tools to practical use in a newsroom. In previous classes, I learned about many research engines online or public records requests, but reviewing my returned data seemed to wield nothing but figures and general information on the case. Mr. March gave me the insight to not only read the facts, but to read into the fats and question the data in front of me. In addition to reading into the facts, he proved that it was beneficial to crosscheck the facts with other data to see if anything was awry. Mr. March’s presentation was one of the most empowering lectures on being an enterprising journalist.