Summary: The amount of effort Sally Herships put into her first investigative journalism piece….. well, it’s enough to drive you to smoke! “The Five Percent Rule” is Sally’s 10-month-long foray into investigative reporting, a story on the under-pricing of tobacco on military bases. The piece aired on Marketplace in June of 2011 as part of <a href="http://marketplace.publicradio.org/maps/america/military-tobacco/" target="_blank">a series on tobacco</a>. On this edition of HowSound, Sally talks about some of her behind-the-scenes work on the project. It’s a bit startling, actually. Huge spreadsheets, hundreds of phone calls…. even a new pair of special glasses to prevent the headaches she was getting from looking at a computer screen too long. Sally says she received assistance from I.R.E. — <a href="http://www.ire.org/" target="_blank">Investigative Reporters and Editors</a>. They were a tremendous help for this kind of deep reporting and exacting work. Have a listen then let us know about your investigative work. Here’s Sally’s <a href="http://fivepercentrule.org/pxtobacco/" target="_blank">blog</a> for “The Five Percent Rule.” And, no, Sally doesn’t smoke. This edition of HowSound was produced on <a href="http://hindenburgsystems.com/" target="_blank">Hindenburg</a> software rather than ProTools, my usual audio editor of choice for a good dozen years. I haven’t switched to Hindenburg, but I sure like it a lot.
