The New England Center for Investigative Reporting is the first non-profit, university-based investigative reporting center in the country dedicated to local and regional issues. It was founded by veteran Boston journalists Joe Bergantino and Maggie Mulvihill and is based at the Boston University College of Communication. In collaboration with its media partners, along with BU Journalism Professors Dick Lehr and Mitch Zuckoff and their students, NECIR produces high-quality, high-impact, multi-media investigative projects. NECIR helps to fill the ever-widening void of investigative and explanatory reporting by creating partnerships with region-wide news organizations, including ethnic and online media. Working closely with ethnic news outlets, we tap into important stories not being aggressively covered by mainstream media and offer journalists working for those news organizations the assistance and guidance needed to do more investigative reporting on their own.

A critical component of NECIR is education. NECIR trains the next generation of investigative reporters including students at Boston University and inner-city high schools. Teams of Boston University journalism students work with us each semester as “reporter-trainees” to research and produce our investigative projects, for which they receive course credit. NECIR also serves as a laboratory to come up with new and creative ways to deliver long-form investigative journalism to an online audience. We do this by using new technologies and multi-media platforms to reach diverse readers, listeners and viewers.

NECIR aims to push beyond traditional investigative reporting to encourage the public to explore and act on solutions to the region’s problems and challenges. Our projects are geared toward impacting decision-makers, helping to shape the public agenda and building a body of work that serves our city and our region well.