London Free Press’ Randy Richmond uses investigative story to teach budding journalists
Aleah Balas | March 3, 2020
Though Randy Richmond has done some incredible pieces of journalism during his tenure, his six-part investigative piece “We Are The Cops” is unprecedented. From something that started as a short, 110-word press release, Richmond dug to the bottom of the story to produce 19,000 words worth of necessary clarification.
The Michener Award-winning journalist took the time to speak to Western University students about investigative journalism along with the merits and challenges that are inextricably bound with the profession.
“We Are The Cops” is a six-part piece published by The London Free Press which exposes London Police officers for an assault charge on a young woman in September 2016. The interesting part was that it was originally the young woman, under the pseudonym Emily, who was charged that night.
Richmond explains how the story came to be, noting his attempts to contact the victim as well as the lawyer and the various steps he took in order to be ethical in the process which added both cost and time to the project.
The husband and father of three, including two daughters close to Emily’s age, was committed to this story and used this empathy to connect with the victim.
“My message to her was basically, I know who you are, I know what happened and I’d like you to talk. I made a connection with her saying ‘I have kids your age,’ which I do. I understand you’re going through a crisis.”
By establishing a relationship with the victim, Richmond was able to develop trust which paid off later in the process when Emily declined to speak to Paquette’s lawyer about the details of Richmond’s investigative report.
In regards to his concern about breaking the story in both a timely and accurate way, Richmond notes that he worried about it every day, right from the beginning. One of his challenges throughout the process was the publication ban that Paquette tried to implement, allowing other news sources access to information that Richmond himself had uncovered.
“Some of the stuff that I had spent months digging, they were going to get just by showing up at this hearing — and that happened,” Richmond says, “they [the other news outlets] got a good chunk of information.”
Richmond’s work spans throughout various areas and he has achieved many accreditations and awards throughout his career, including the aforementioned Michener Award which promotes excellence in Canadian journalism.
There are many challenges that even a reporter of his prestige and level of experience encounters, ranging from legal binds to missing sources or even the increasingly multimedia component of journalism. Although Richmond initially lacked educational expertise in criminal subject matter, he has something that is both hard to learn and impossible to teach.
“The best expertise is just being curious.”
Randy Richmond’s six-part series “We Are The Cops” can be found online at:
https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/we-are-the-cops-an-exclusive-london-free-press-investigation
