By Bella HUANG
Hong Kong - The Pulitzer prize winner, Matt Carroll, spoke about the difficult working as an investigative journalist during his lecture in Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) on October 24.
Matt Carroll was one of the journalists from Boston Globe that disclosed the widespread child sexual abuse by priests in Boston, which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, a top honor for journalists.
The Oscar-winning film Spotlight showed the "glamorous" side of the investigation process, as Matt said, but in reality, the job itself was very harsh.
“It’s a tough job... It’s not very glamorous,” said Matt, in the lecture Spotlight on ‘Spotlight’. “We were working seven days a week for the first few months. And it was 16 hours a day.”
For the sake of the investigation, Matt also testified that he lost a lot of family time.
“It was really hard and that caused a lot of stress for me. Because you know I love my kids a lot and I wanted them to know ‘yes your dad is still alive’,” Matt said.
Moreover, investigative journalism requires a lot of funding. According to a forum in Duke University, it normally costs $200,000 to fund an investigative series, and $500,000 for a reporting unit for one year.
"It cost about one million dollars," Matt said.
Although the work of investigative journalism requires a lot of effort and commitment, it is still an enjoyable and worthwhile job as Matt said, "At the end of the day, you can get a sense of satisfaction... my story made a change...and it helped people."
Today, investigative journalism is facing problems. Matt expressed his worries about the future of this journalism branch.
Matt mentioned that many newsrooms have cut back investigative journalists. “It’s kind of a sad reality and I wish it wasn’t true,” he added.
According to James T. Hamilton, a professor of communication in Stanford University, from 2003 to 2012, the number of stories exceeding 2000 words dropped by 35% in the Wall Street Journal, around 50% at the Washington Post, and 86% at the Los Angeles Times.
Jade Zhou, a 19-yaer-old journalism student said the lecture was inspiring, “I thought investigative journalists are cool when watching the film. Now I know that the real work can actually be very hard.”
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