Story behind the story

Here’s a link to the story: http://www.idsnews.com/article/2016/12/culture-of-fear-existed-under-kevin-wilson

Indiana Daily Student managing editor Brody Miller reported on a “culture of fear” that existed in the Indiana football team’s locker room under former coach Kevin Wilson, who used to coach at OU.

Miller said that he heard news of Wilson’s potential resignation on Dec. 1. Though he’s the managing editor this year, he spent the past two years covering Indiana football and Kevin Wilson, so he felt like he had connections that could help him find out if it was true and why. After making some calls, two players told their stories of life under Wilson, which went in the story. One of those involves a player playing with a hole in his knuckle.

Miller spent a week after that doing more reporting to try to form a more complete story of the culture that existed under Wilson. Most of Miller’s reporting was done off-the-record, he said, and those conversations pointed him in the right direction.

He said he used Facebook and went to profiles of people he knew who worked in the program and went through all of their friends to find more people working for the program, creating a long list of potential sources.

Miller believed that sources were willing to speak because his resignation and speculation as to why he was resigning was already out in the open, so people were more willing since they wouldn’t be the original whistleblower. He also said that working the beat for two years gave him an in with a lot of people.

The hardest part of reporting this story was getting players and coaches to talk to him, a college student, seriously about such a large issue. His way around that was to ask everybody possible until he got the answers.