“Sometimes even criminal discipline gets avoided too.” “Often the perpetrators are able to avoid whatever punishment was put in place at their previous school,” Jacoby said. The in-depth series, which was the culmination of a year-long project supported by a team of eight staffers, delved into the ways the NCAA not only permitted but facilitated the recruitment and transfer of athletes who’d been kicked out or disciplined for a sexual offense at prestigious sports schools but then were quickly snapped up by another school. Even when suspended or expelled from school for rape, his reporting showed, NCAA athletes can transfer elsewhere and continue playing
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Jacoby’s reporting pointed out that while the NCAA punishes student athletes for bad grades, smoking marijuana or accepting money and free meals, its 440-page Division I rulebook does not cite penalties for sexual, violent or criminal misconduct. “But we wanted people to know, especially, that there are ways to fix this problem, ways that people have already been working at, that just haven’t been adopted widely yet.” “It’s easy in a really depressing investigation like this, about sexual assault, to feel hopeless at the end of reading it” Jacoby said in a Facebook Live conversation about his reporting, on which this write-up is based.
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Jacoby said incorporating solutions journalism reporting into the series showed readers a possible path forward, whether they were members of the general public, leaders of sports programs at colleges and universities, members of Congress or the NCAA. And two of the colleges that had perpetuated the “predator pipeline” pledged to change their procedures for vetting student athletes who transfer in. Under pressure, the NCAA itself announced that it is reviewing its policies.
Soon after the series ran, members of Congress issued a bi-partisan call for an independent study of NCAA policies. “And here we’re seeing some direct evidence that the solutions component has helped bring that about.” “I think a goal of a lot of newsrooms is for your stories to create impact,” Jacoby said.
The series also included a solutions journalism story, showcasing a response to the problem that’s showing signs of success. He found the combination so compelling that the next semester he took another course in the fledgling sequence, to deepen his understanding of the solutions journalism approach.įast forward to December, 2019 and Jacoby, now an investigative data reporter with the USA Today Network, published a four-part series revealing that at least 33 athletes had transferred to NCAA schools despite being disciplined for sex offenses at other colleges, creating a “predator pipeline” among colleges with elite sports programs. From classroom to newsroom: How USA Today’s solutions journalism reporting is helping change policies on sexual assault and college athletesįour years ago, as an undergraduate journalism major at the University or Oregon, Kenny Jacoby enrolled in a brand new course that combined investigative reporting and solutions journalism.
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