Pulitzer Center Update April 9, 2024
Bukola Adebayo on Identifying Undertold Stories at Hampton University
Project
The Poisoned Wells of Baruwa
This project explores the health and environmental consequences for residents in Baruwa.
“Tell your story around evidence, with voices, and all the elements so that it can’t be denied.”
Journalist Bukola Adebayo traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, to Hampton University in Virginia to speak with journalism students about investigative reporting on March 19 and 20, 2024. Giving a presentation and visiting classes, she spoke about her experiences reporting on undertold stories internationally.
“I think my takeaway on many of the stories I’ve written in the past ... is that investigations or stories that count actually start from the community,” Adebayo said. “They’re usually around us, in our conversations, in our communities, and our interactions, there are stories.”
Adebayo visited first-year classes, outlining the distinguishing characteristics of investigative journalism and counseling students on how to best prepare themselves for a turbulent industry during their next few years at Hampton. She worked with the Investigative Journalism class of juniors and seniors to help them workshop a collaborative draft based on months of collective reporting. She advised how to combine months of reporting into a succinct and effective narrative.
She also visited the International Journalism class, where she spoke about differences in global reporting. She gave a presentation, open to all students, on the process of reporting The Poisoned Wells of Baruwa, her recent Pulitzer Center-supported project.
In all of the classes she spoke to, Adebayo encouraged students to read the news. She explained that one of the best ways to improve your writing is to read others’, analyzing what you do and don’t like to develop your personal voice.
She also reminded that the news can be a great way to find a seed for a long-form, underreported story.
“That’s what I want us to see when we read the news,” Adebayo said. “You never know how you can connect the dots. If it stood out to you, if you’re thinking, ‘How did this happen?’, that is how investigations start. It’s usually close to you, it's usually very local; it’s something that you’ve seen but not paid attention to. As a reporter you have to be able to trust what you hear and let it lead you to something bigger.”
Adebayo went through the fundamentals of investigative journalism. She urged students to go beyond the facts to address a bigger picture, get to the heart of the matter, and work to hold those in power accountable for the systems being investigated.
“It could be as simple as the head of the district, or someone who can beat the system that you’ve been looking at,” Adebayo said. “Anyone in a position of leadership and responsibility can, and should, be held accountable.”
However, while those in power deserve accountability, she also cautioned that targeting an individual can be seen as a “witch hunt.”
“I think investigations work better when they target systems and not individuals,” Adebayo said. “It’s so it doesn’t become personal; it’s still relevant and has a higher shelf life for your editors and communities. If you look at a system, they tend to respond to it more, and respond faster.”
One student asked what advice she would give to her younger self working in the field. Adebayo said she was “a bit shy about asking difficult questions,” and encouraged the student to be unafraid, a cornerstone of effective investigative reporting.
Another student asked what her favorite part of working as a journalist was, and Adebayo shared that she loves interviews: “Meeting people is a way of knowing more about the world, about yourself, and about people's experiences.”
She added that an article will suffer without speaking to the right people.
“I think when I struggle and I’m not able to write, I find out it's because I have not done the right interview,” Adebayo said. “I don’t have the right text, I don’t have the right voice, I don't know what to say on paper without that key interview.”
Adebayo is a correspondent for the Thomson Reuters Foundation/Context and has reported on health, gender, the environment, and political issues across several African countries for media outlets, including CNN. She recently joined the Pulitzer Center’s cohort of 2024 Rainforest Investigations Fellows.
