THE INVESTIGATIVE GENRE: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Abstract

This paper argues that investigative journalists have developed successful strategies for illuminating issues characterized by sensitive information and obscure decision-making processes. Many issues in geography, particularly those involving the examination of policies, of both public and private bodies, are amenable to the investigative approach, which requires interviewing key decision-makers and others, assessment of publicly available documents, and discovery of nonpublic and other sensitive information. An empirical examination of some elements of recent regional-development policy in the Province of Ontario illustrates the investigative approach. History by and large is quite inaccurate but you see in the effluxion of time those who might correct it disappear. And so it's just there and taken to be deadly accurate, which of course it isn't. The other thing is that all the humanity of the events is generally washed out by the historians. The fact that guys do get drunk and that men do do crazy thing...