Megha Rajagopalan: Every generation has to find a way to reinvent the model
Joining us for our second episode is Megha Rajagopalan, international investigative reporter at the New York Times. Megha is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist focusing primarily on human rights, labour and conflict. Her extensive reporting has taken her to China, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Before the NYT, Megha was a trainee then political correspondent at Reuters, and China bureau chief at Buzzfeed.
With our hosts Freya Shaw and Marine Saint, we hear the challenges Megha overcame in her investigations, the value of gaining your sources’ trust and how beat reporting is the best way into the field.
Transcript
You can read the stories Megha discusses here:
How US Dollars Are Helping The Philippines' Bloody Drug War
The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child Marriage and Hysterectomies
Pulitzer winning series - Inside China's internment camps
Hosts: Freya Shaw and Marine Saint
Music: John Abbot, City Phases, courtesy of Epidemic Sound
Saint:
Welcome to Inspire the Women in Journalism podcast, where we speak to the best female voices in the industry, charting their breakthroughs, career triumphs, and challenges. We’re your producers. I'm Marine Saint.
Shaw:
And I'm Freya Shaw. Across each episode, you'll hear from a different woman who's making waves in journalism. We ask our guests what has changed in the media industry, their career highs and lows, and how they navigate being a woman in journalism.
Saint:
Our show will also feature exclusive round table discussions between inspiring women from every beat and background in the media.
For our second episode, we're joined in the studio by Megha Rajagopalan, international Investigative Reporter at the New York Times.
Shaw:
Megha's investigations primarily focus on human rights, labor and conflict, and her reporting has taken her to China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Before the Times Mega worked at Reuters and Buzzfeed, where she reported as part of a Pulitzer prize winning team for international reporting in 2021.
Saint:
Welcome to the podcast Megha. You've reported on tech, politics, international relations. How did you get into the investigative world?
Megha Rajagopalan:
I guess I was always interested in investigative reporting. You know, even when I was at university, I think I was really interested in kinds of reporting that reveal things that are in the public interest and that are sort of hard to find out. My first job after college, I was a book assistant to Steve Coll, who's like a very well known investigative journalist in the US and has written a number of books. I worked with him on his book about ExxonMobil and I just learned tons about investigative reporting from him and how to develop sources, how to convince people to talk about things that they might be really reluctant to talk about, how to gather and organize, and understand documents. so that was like my first sort of foray into it. And then, I did like basically beat reporting jobs for the next several years of my career. And then, I ended up working on some investigative projects when I was at Buzzfeed News, and then eventually transitioned into a role that was mostly focused on investigations.
Shaw: How did you find that that beat style reporting informed your investigation? Did it at all, or was that an easy transition to make?
Rajagopalan:
I think, I mean, I'm of the opinion that you should do beat reporting, especially early in your career. I think not everyone does it but it helps, it really teaches you a lot. My first beat reporting job, like my first proper job was at Reuters when I reported on the politics and general news team in their Beijing bureau, and I covered all kinds of stuff, diplomacy, national security, issues around health, human rights, social issues. And, it was just like, like the grind of it was actually so helpful, like just having to go to briefings all the time. Having to cultivate sources on the same stories that would go on for months and months and months and learning how to keep people's trust and build a roll of decks. Like all of those things are really important skills. Investigative reporting is really, it's just beat reporting, but it's kind of stretched out and you might publish a little bit less, but it's not that different as a skill set. The way that your work appears can be a little bit different. So I think the two things are really compatible. I guess there's a cliche in this industry that, you know, the best investigations come out of beat reporting. When I look around at my colleagues at the times, some of the best stuff we publish, actually a lot of the best stuff that we publish comes out of people that are just real experts at their beats, like have been covering it for years and years and they know it just like inside and out, better than their sources. And like from that they produce these just incredible, revelatory investigations as well.
Saint:
And what would you say was the first investigation that you worked on that informed your career choices now that led you down that path of investigations? Was it whilst you were at Buzzfeed? Did it happen before then whilst you were in China, even during that period of your career?
Rajagopalan:
I guess like the first investigation I did that I was really, really proud of was probably at Buzzfeed News. I think it was the first big project that I did there. It was about the drug war in the Philippines. So basically, at that time, the president, Rodrigo Duterte, he had basically embarked on this incredibly popular and like populist campaign, to punish drug users, just like ordinary people that maybe had bought drugs or consumed drugs, with very, very thin evidence. And, he had basically empowered these like police squads to go out into the poorest neighborhoods, like slums of Manila and, all over the country as well, like, and basically just shoot people up. And we went out there and I had this question about whether the US government had contributed any aid to the police units that were conducting this because it was like a new policy. It was like, something that no one really quite understood like how far it was gonna go yet.
So, I had obtained this database that showed State Department contributions to individual police units. So basically we went to Manila and I went and talked to these police officers. To like, basically to find out if they were receiving the aid and then also if they were participating in the drug war.
And at night we would go out and follow the police and into these neighborhoods and watch as they just brutalize people. And it was just really, really shocking to see what this powerful entity, the State Department was saying that they were doing, as well as their actual data.
And then the second thing was what the facts were on the ground, like what was actually happening. And I think a lot of the investigations that I've worked on have used that kind of frame, like where do the facts on the ground deviate from what people say that they are.
Shaw: And obviously sort of to find that you've gotta be on the ground yourself. I mean, you said you went to Manila. Are there any unique challenges, sort of as a woman going to these foreign countries and doing these really, really tough investigations on really important but very difficult topics? Like what challenges are there, what did you face during that?
Rajagopalan:
It's not just about gender. It's like, it's everything. it's your class, it's your racial background. I mean, it's, it's a question of how people perceive you a lot of the time. But depending on where you go, it can be different. I think as a woman, especially as a young [00:06:40] woman, you're often underestimated, which I think can be really good as an investigative journalist. I know a lot of people that have used that very effectively.
On that investigation, I mean, I was working at Buzzfeed, so that helped. And you know, I carried a backpack and wore a t-shirt and jeans, like I did not dress like I was gonna be on TV or something. And, I think that helped. That probably helps some of these police officers trust a little more just because they don't see you as a threat.
So I think it's just kind of about, just being conscious of how you're perceived and like trying to use that in a way that works for you.
Saint:
On the point about trust and gaining trust of perhaps vulnerable sources, some of your more recent pieces at the New York Times on India's sugar industry and the workers exploited in that system, how did you gain the trust of those sources? And did it perhaps help, being a woman, to connect with some of those sources? What would you advise journalists who are hoping to shed light on some atrocities and who need to gain the trust of sources to speak out and share their experiences. What did you do in that case?
Rajagopalan:
I'm very aware that I'm super privileged in this, but I think that the best way to do this is just to, if you can do it, just spend as much time as possible. And I was very lucky that I was able to do that because the Times was just so supportive of this project. I went for I think like two trips in I think about a month and then a month and a half.
We went into the project thinking, you know, we wanna identify women that we can really focus on who we can tell their full story and kind of help readers connect to this story that is probably very far away and on a subject that people don't really read about that much. So once we found those three characters, it was sort of like we did a lot of interviewing. We interviewed dozens of women. And, once we found those three characters, we just sort of went back again and again just to spend time.
The main woman in the story is named Archana Chaure. And, the first time that I met her, I was like, she's the one, because she was just so smart, so outspoken, just very articulate and then also had cut sugar cane that fed the supply chains of major companies including Coca-Cola. So that was like a very key part of the narrative and also had endured just unbelievable hardship in her life, including some of the medical trauma that came with getting a hysterectomy, which was sort of at the core of that story.
So with Archana, we went back, I, you know, we made sure that she was comfortable. we hung around with her kids. We helped her with some of the farm work. You know, we walked with her places. We met some of her friends. She took us to a wedding once. The thing is when you get to know someone, you're just so much more comfortable with them, right? The material gets better.
I think the more comfort your source has with you and I feel like that's like where a lot of the best writing comes from.
Shaw: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned sort of companies like Coca-Cola and from what I understand, when you went to China and you were reporting the government’s mass detention and incarceration of Muslim minorities in China, you had your visa revoked. Are there any sort of struggles you've faced, not just sort of having companies, but entire countries almost against you?
Rajagopalan:
I think China is the only one I hope, but we know so far. Yeah. Touch wood.
Basically what had happened there was that they stopped issuing me new visas. They never said like, you know, goodbye for life. So, I still, I mean, there's lots of journalists that have stopped getting visas to China and then they're able to go back at some point in their career.
So I still very much hope that that will happen. I really treasure the time that I spent there. When I started that line of reporting, it did not occur to me that that was gonna happen because that wasn't happening to anyone back then.
And now it's really happened to a lot of people. So I think the circumstances are very different and you know, a lot of times these things have to do with politics, diplomacy, things that are just much bigger than me and my little story, I guess. So like you don't necessarily know what's driving it.
But in general when you're reporting, you shouldn't think about these like gray zone areas where there's like a possibility of something like getting expelled from a country.
I mean, you have to factor those things] in. But, I do think if you self-censor there is like a risk of maybe going too far with it and it's something that's best avoided.
Saint:
And with that story and the series of stories that won you the Pulitzer Prize, along with your team, including Alison Killing. What were some of the challenges you encountered? Because I know you've spoken a bit about access, gaining access to sources being on the ground. I know with that story that you had to use some other techniques, satellite imagery, other sorts of open source information. How is that kind of changing investigations now when you can't have access on the ground?
Rajagopalan:
Yeah. So basically what happened was I lost my China credentials and my visa and like a few months after that, I was at this, basically I was at this retreat. That was for the purpose of putting together this guidebook for citizen journalists.
And, I met Alison Killing, who's a really brilliant architect. She's an investigative reporter herself now, at the Financial Times. And, she had used her art, her skills and architecture and geolocation to do investigative projects before. So I talked her ear off about it and she said, you know what if we started using satellite imagery to try to locate more of these prisons?
It would've been pretty, prohibitively difficult to try to find these camps and prisons at scale. So the idea that you could do this in a more open source way was pretty revelatory to me. I learned after that just kind of the scale of the open source world and these organizations like Bellingcat and lots of others that have experimented with like new forms of information finding.
Shaw:
How much do you find that languages – because a lot of your stories are international – how much are they a barrier to being able to inform your investigations, being able to speak to sources? Do you frequently have fixers or sort of what's the relationship with languages and how do you navigate that?
Rajagopalan:
Yeah, so I think early in your career you should learn if you're, if you want to do international work, you should learn another language, generally. Mine was Chinese, so when I was starting out, obviously like when you're starting out, no one wants to help you hire a translator and maybe they shouldn't either.
So I did all my own work in China and I was quite lucky to be able to do that. I just like learned, basically I just decided I was gonna learn Chinese and then I put a lot of time into it and it also really helped being a beat reporter again and working at Reuters and having to do everything in Chinese and monitor the news in Chinese and interview people in Chinese and all that stuff, and do briefings. So then I, after I did that for a while, I kind of got to a phase in my career where I landed a job where there was money, for translators and stuff like that. So, now if I'm doing work that's in another language, I would generally work with a translator.
Or like I'll work with a local journalist, who will, you know, share contacts, sometimes do interviews together, all that sort of stuff. On the India project, we worked with this, this local, she's not really, she doesn't identify as a reporter, but she translated and she knows the subject area really well.
Saint:
Wow. That's a lesson to us all to have another language, at least under our belts. I wonder, because you've worked in a few very esteemed newsrooms, Reuters, Buzzfeed, New York Times, how you would compare your experience in those newsrooms and how you ended up at the New York Times. Was it through the scope of your investigations at Buzzfeed that you thought the New York Times was a natural next step? Or was it the case that a job opened up, a new team opened up? How did that work out?
Rajagopalan:
So I started as a trainee at Reuters in their Beijing bureau. And I did that for about four years. I spent most of that time on the politics and general news team. And then, Buzzfeed News was, believe it or not, was expanding internationally, around 2016. And, the woman who's the world editor at Buzzfeed News, approached me about a job that they had coming open in China. Basically they wanted to open a China bureau and they wanted someone to do it for them who was already there.
That's something that I really wanted to do at the time. I really, really loved my time at Buzzfeed News. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody that worked there that didn't, that wouldn't say that it was just a great place to work.
But, I left at a point when it was pretty clear that I think Buzzfeed News was not gonna exist anymore. And sure enough it doesn't. And sadly, very sadly, but at that time they offered buyouts and I took one and I talked to a lot of different news organizations. I think the thing about the New York Times is they were, at that time, starting the team that I'm currently on, which is the International Investigations team. And it just seemed like a total dream job and, yeah, I, it would, I would've been outta my mind to say no to it, I think.
And I also, I really wanted to work with the editor who is currently my boss. He's just a great journalist and a great person. It seemed like a good place to try to get better at what I do and, and to learn from people with a lot more experience, a lot more stories than me.
Shaw:
Yeah. I mean, sort of on the topic of learning, what are the biggest challenges you faced in your career? How did you overcome them and what advice can you give me and Marine?
Saint:
Yes, as we embark on our careers!
Rajagopalan:
For me, like I try to constantly think about just how can I get better? I think one of the challenges, especially for me as an investigative reporter is that you can get stuck in things. At least for me, that's my personality type. I'll get stuck on something, I'll get too deep in the woods and it helps to have a good editor at that point. But I guess I think one thing that I try to do now that I think is helpful is at the beginning of every year, or if you choose some arbitrary point you have to think about how can I make this the best year of my career?
How can I do worthwhile work? You're only in your career for a certain amount of time, and like, I think that can happen a lot early in your career because people put work on you that you're not necessarily that passionate about, but you just have to do it.
But you have to kind of hold on to whatever it is that you really wanna do and not really, not let that go and try to carve out time as best you can.
I guess just like gaining, gaining trust and think about how to find great mentors in your career. And, I think one of the things I generally say to people is I've had a lot of great mentors that are kind of later in their careers. And I've been very lucky to, you know, to have met those people and I'm super grateful for them. I think it's also really important to have a mentor who's six years older than you.
Because in this industry, things change really quickly. Everything changes, the profit models change, the places you wanna work change. The kinds of jobs you wanna get change. The tech changes, I mean, we just talked about OSINT. There's so many, when I was in uni, they used to talk about computer assisted reporting. This sounds like it's from, oh my gosh, a hundred years ago now. And I wasn't even in uni that long ago. I mean, yeah, it's just you need somebody that is gonna kind of help you keep your finger on the pulse.
Shaw:
Yeah. I guess the biggest change that's sort of coming up technology-wise is AI at the moment.
Rajagopalan:
Yeah, it's, I mean, exactly like I need somebody to help me figure that out.
Saint:
So we like to end each episode by asking the guests for a piece of advice that they would give to young journalists starting out. What's been a piece of advice that you've received early on that's really stuck with you?
Rajagopalan:
I've gotten lots of good advice. I would just say like, when I was starting out, it was around the time of the global financial crisis and a lot of people told me to quit and go into marketing or something. And I will just be contrarian because I know that people hear this today because today people tell you to quit because of AI or they tell you to quit because there's no profit model and all those things are true and maybe you should quit, I don't know. But I don't think you should, I mean, in my lifetime, there's always been some existential threat in this industry.
I think people that are older than me went through this kind of golden period where, you know, classified [ads were a really big revenue driver and they were, subscriptions were much more stable and stuff like print media obviously was a dominant form. And I think, I don't wanna downplay the hardships of doing this because it is very real.I mean, it's not stable and, it can be really tough. But I think that if you're passionate about it, I do really believe like we don't make widgets in this business, right? This is really important. It's important for, you know, for societies to function. I think for open societies, for democratic societies to function, you need a free press and, you need really smart people, like good, good, committed, passionate people to be part of that.
And, I think that every generation has to reinvent this model. You have to find a way into this. Like for my generation, unfortunately it was, social media – didn't turn out the best. But I mean that, the fact that social media came to exist when I was younger, that created space for new forms of journalism, new styles of storytelling. And you know, for you guys it'll be something else. And you have to find out what that is. And, I think that's a really important contribution and you should do that if you're passionate about it.
Shaw:
Just perseverance. What a lovely note to end on and it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.
Rajagopalan:
You too. Thanks for having me on.
Saint:
Thank you for coming on the show.
Shaw:
Yeah, thank you so much.
Saint:
It was such a privilege to have Megha on the show. I really took from our discussion a sense of hope that investigative journalism can adapt even when newsrooms are being closed and the industry itself is being threatened.
Its sort of well known how fast paced the media industry broadly is, but knowing that journalism and journalists are staying on top of it in really unique and innovative ways is fascinating. We will have even more exciting conversations lined up. So join us next time for more stories, career journeys and guidance. Don't forget to check the Women in Journalism website and socials for updates, new episodes, events, and more. Keep listening and stay inspired.
