Four goals of the Marshall Project
- Focus on reaching the right people.
The Marshall Project is thinking a lot about who is reading its investigative reporting on the American justice system. But while many online media outlets’ goal is to have as large of an audience as possible, the Project’s focus is more on who they reach, be that other journalists, politicians or those whose work relates to the criminal justice system. They measure success through metrics like a retweet from a Congressman, being a catalyst for more criminal justice journalism and even influencing legislative change.
“We try to assign stories if they’re good and not whether they will get clicks…” said Ivar Vong, the Project’s director of technology. “Our stories are not designed for a million people. They are designed for the right amount of people and the right kind of people.”
2) Collaborate with a wide variety of media outlets.
Since its first article — which was a collaboration with the Washington Post on a possibly wrongly convicted man who was executed in 2004 — The Marshall Project has developed a collaborative model and has worked with over 50 publications including more traditional outlets such as the New York Times and newer publications such as Refinery29 and Vice. Besides bringing the Project’s work to a wider audience, these collaborations can also add multimedia storytelling elements including art, photography and audio.
The Marshall Project recently won its third Pulitzer Prize in collaboration with ProPublica for “An Unbelievable Case of Rape,” the story of a rape survivor who was actually persecuted for her crime. According to managing editor Gabriel Dance, the story led to changes in the Westminster Police Department, which was involved in the investigation, around how it handled sexual assault.
“Everybody behaves differently when trauma occurs,” said Dance. “There’s no right way to behave when you have been you have been raped or something terrible has happened to you.”
3) Find ways to tell the stories of people who are often left out of mainstream media.
The Marshall Project helps local and national publications develop investigative reporting skills, including how to file Freedom of Information Acts and get access to people in prison. Managing Editor Kirsten Danis explained that they regularly use lawyers as sources, as they are often able to disclose more information. Danis, though, highlighted the power of talking to people in person and said that people involved in the criminal justice system are often willing to speak openly.
“I don’t think people distrust (the media) as much as you suspect they might,” said Danis. “People really want to tell their stories. In general, people want to talk. They want you to know what happened to them.”
4) Get people to care about criminal justice.
One common criticism of the Marshall Project is that it is biased against the criminal justice system as many of the articles expose injustices within it. Many of the publication’s staff see what they do as a form of “return on investment” journalism in which their work can lead to social change. Conversely, Dance said it’s difficult to get readers interesting in topics that are not only complicated, but also involve people who are difficult to sympathize with.
“It’s hard to get people to care and empathize because the people we cover have at sometime done something that wasn’t lawful…” said Dance. “So we are dealing with people who nobody wants to look at, who nobody wants to help, who don’t have much of a voice… So a lot of it is finding the human element that people do connect with.”
