The history of the interview

Before interviews, newspapers mainly published only official documents and public speeches, while conversations between reporters and officials were not documented. It could have been James Gordon Bennet who invented it in 1836 or Horace Greeley in 1859. At the beginning it got a lot of criticism from veteran journalists, such as E.L. Godkin, who claimed that this is a corrupt act of both the interviewer and the interviewee, who want to deceive both of their appearances in the public by planning the questions and answers ahead of time. It got popular when Thompson Cooper from the New York World interviewed Pope Pius IX.
Most interviewers at the time thought taking notes while interviewing would frighten the interviewee and intimidate him, but soon they’d change their minds to a mindset of taking notes doesn’t intimidate the interviewee, but actually make him happier, because if you take notes it means that the interviewee is saying important things, and it will encourage him to talk more.
The main disadvantage of interviews in the past was that the interviewee had to get the document the interviewer wanted to publish before it was published, for corrections, and if there is something that is true, but the interviewee doesn’t want the public to know about, he could just erase it. It’s alright with private individuals, but when public figures are being interviewed, it can cause serious problems. Also, interviewees had the right to give consent to everything said in the interview. Moreover, a reporter can cherry pick a few quotes from an interview and only publish them, making the public get a false vision of the interviewee. Lastly, reporters had the moral obligation to be as discreet as possible. When a public figure accidentally says something that can affect the whole nation, just like when William Howard Taft, former US president, (before he was president, when he was Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt) disagreed with the president on an important issue, or when Elanor Roosevelt, FDR’s wife said in one of her interviews that FDR refused to sign a joint proclamation with Herbert Hoover to close the banks the day before the inauguration, the reporter had so much power in his hands, to leak it or not to? Why would a public figure tell interviewers this stuff? Because public figures saw interviewers as therapists that would  be happy to hear their problems in life.
Over time interviewing became less the occasion for a separate feature article and more a routine technique incorporated into most news stories.

The history of press conferences

Press conferences date back to 1913, when US president Woodrow Wilson invited a lot of reporters to the white house, and answered all of their questions. At the time, it wasn’t that big and formal, and the reason Wilson wanted to do it is because he wanted to communicate with the public and address stuff by using the media. With the technological advance of the 20th century consisting of the radio and television, press conferences could be seen by the people too, making it even easier to address stuff. With the rise of the internet, viewers sometimes have the chance to ask these people questions from their homes, and not only reporters. If they ask about the pandemic, say these were held through zoom.

Hicky’s Bengal Gazette

The first newspaper in India. The whole article is an amazing interview between the interviewer Sharmila Ganesan Ram with the US-based journalist historian Andrew Otis, who five years ago spent a lot of time in India researching on the first newspaper made there, by James Augustus Hicky. He published a book named ‘Hicky’s Bengal Gazette’, in which he tells the story of Hicky Bengal and his research findings. In the 18th century, Hicky was an Irishman who came to Calcutta (now called Kolkata), a city in India that was of course under British rule. As an Irishman, he wasn’t in the highest class, and in his childhood he learned printing, yet he still went there to start a shipping business to gain some bucks, yet his ship was damaged in a storm, and as a result he ended up in debtor’s prison. Then William Hickey, an English lawyer with no connection to our Hicky, decides to help Hicky to get out of prison (his memoirs are how Otis found out on this amazing story), and after a few years. Hicky published ‘Hicky’s Bengal Gazette’ - the first newspaper in India that fought for press freedom, although it was soon banned by the government. There are today a few copies of it in several Indian libraries, and Otis had to ask a lot of times “Keno hobe na?” - why not? To gain access to them. Otis now works on a book about the 1781 rebellion against East India Company, while one of his main sources are Hicky’s newspaper.

Annonces, Affiches et Avis Divers pour les Colonies des Isles de France et de Bourbon

Translates to Announcements, Posters and Miscellaneous Notices for the Colonies of the Isles of France and Bourbon. This was the first newspaper in Africa, made by French colonialists in Mauritius in 1773. This newspaper was published weekly by Nicolas Lambert. It was also the first newspaper in the Indian ocean, and so you can infer what it contained from its long name. It was printed at the Royal Printing Office in Port Louis.

Cape Town Gazette and African Advertiser

The second oldest newspaper, made in South Africa, and so it’s credited for paving the way for most newspapers in Africa today. It was made weekly by the British South African government.

South African Commercial Advertiser

The first independent newspaper in Africa, one that was printed both in English and Dutch. Because it was going against the government, a lot of it was censored several times by the orders of Cape Town’s Governor.

The Colonialist

Nothing is said about it in the article except for region and date, but WSC still references it. It is the 9th oldest newspaper in Africa, made in South Africa. It was made by private individuals that are not documented, but it mainly gave news for the European settlers on stuff that happens in Europe while they’re settling.

Al-Waqa’i’a al-Masriya

The first Egyptian newspaper published in Egypt a year or so after the colonialist. It was published weekly in Arabic, and covered local and international news. There is just a picture of it in the article, and it looks like a scroll.

Ways to spread info before Western Journalism

Every culture had a few different ways to deliver information before the British and the French introduced them to western journalism. The most common one was word of mouth, as people tell a rumor to other people and etc. Then there were also messengers, like how Yaakov sends a messenger to tell his bro something in Genesis. There were town carriers, pamphlets, caravanserais, and bulletin’ boards that delivered info to people in different ways.

Rubens Valente gets his human rights violated for being a journalist

The known Brazilian investigative journalist Rubens Valente published a book called Operacao Banqueiro that told the story based on his long investigations as a part of the journal Folha do São Paulo, of a police operation in 2008 that helped the banker Daniel Dantas evading prison, and he details the corruption of the Supreme Federal Court in Brazil that directly helped him, especially judge Gilmar Mendes. He didn’t get any response from Mendes throughout his investigation, yet right when the book was published, Mendes sued him for defamation, citing “damage of image and honor”. The win was given to Valente a few times, yet Mendes kept appealing until it came to the Supreme Court, where he had connections, and exploited them to win the court, and now Valente needs to pay a lot of money because he just did his work - expose people. As a result, the awareness that investigative journalists in corrupt countries like Brazil are in danger has risen up, and so the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization drops a case against the state of Brazil for violating human rights in the Inter-American Commision on Human Rights. This shows how press freedom is at risk in corrupt countries, and how investigative journalists sometimes sacrifice themselves for a good authentic scoop.

The over complex definition of investigative journalism

The article covers investigative journalism’s complex definition, although WSC asks for its origins. So first, according to the article, investigative journalism is a term that every reporter defines differently, although all reporters came to an agreement of five different definitions, as David E. Kaplan tells us.
Definition one: About systematic, in depth and original reporting - Because the word investigation translates to systematic inquiry, it means the reporter needs to go in a slow systematic way to analyze what is really going on, with the addition that the work is original and in depth of course. 
Definition two: About forming a hypothesis - When a reporter gets in the mindset of the good detective, and decides to research stuff. It means that you form a theory and then you test it by going out there and finding facts that support or not support your theory. 
Definition three: About Analyzing public documents and data - When a reporter finds data somewhere (all of them are literally in the historical distortion set), and decides to analyze them more to uncover what is really going on.
Definition four: About making public things that are secret - Just uncovering stuff that has been secret by authoritative figures, and exposing them to the public. 
Definition five: About focusing on social justice and accountability - The fact that a reporter goes and focuses on the good of the public makes it an investigative journalism.
The main definition WSC would want you to know is the mish mash of all these five - a systematic, in depth, original, made by forming a hypothesis and researching documents reporting that unravels secret stuff and focuses on social justice.

The origin of investigative journalism

The earliest example of investigative journalism is a reporting in 1887 by Nellie Bly working for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper, where she went undercover as a patient in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island to expose the shocking conditions and mistreatment of patients there. It led to a series of articles exposing these horrible institutions.

The Watergate Scandal

A scandal that was covered by investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that made the US president at the time, Richard Nixon resign from office. In 1972 Nixon was sitting in his office when burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex, and so these two guys tried to connect the dots between this burglary to Richard Nixon wanting to damage the Democrats to be re-elected as presidents. How? By finding the burglars' identities and matching them with people who are close to Nixon. Then Nixon went to court and had to publish all of his secret tapes that shook the American public, leading to him leaving office.

The Weinstein investigation

The Weinstein investigation was an investigation of Harvey Wenstein, a former American film producer, who sex offended women on set. He produced top movies that you should watch unless you’re a junior, like Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love. Two investigative journalists from the New York Times, Jodi Kanto and Megan Twohey, with The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow worked on the connection between these two things by investigating a lot of actresses, and so in 2020 Weinstein was sentenced for 23 years in prison. Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published a book called ‘She Said’, that covers  all of their investigation.