An under-the-hood look at what it takes to create and maintain an enormous, ongoing audience-led investigation
In September 2018, ABC News launched the ABC’s biggest ever crowdsourced investigation into aged care in Australia. We knew there were issues and it had scale, with 175,985 people in residential aged care and 249,000 in all types of care – not to mention their children, grand-children and staff.
The audience response was immediate and unprecedented: more than 4000 people shared their detailed and often-harrowing stories with our tiny investigative team, leading to months of work.
The resulting body of work across digital and broadcast platforms, including a two-part TV documentary, ultimately led to a Royal Commission – the highest possible form of inquiry on matters of public importance in Australia. And the stories keep on coming.
Developing a national crowdsourced investigation is not easy – but worth it. The Australian aged care complaints system severely lacked transparency: data is scant and key statistics are not collected or are kept away from public scrutiny.
We needed help to uncover the stories of abuse, neglect and premature death: so with support from friends at ProPublica, we experimented with new tools, built out new workflows and developed new strategies and products to engage audiences in the project at every step.
To help other news outlets keen to do similar work, we’d like to share what we learned – and we’d be keen share the stage with ProPublica and others.
Suggested Speaker(s)
- Jo Puccini
Head of Investigations, ABC News (Australia)