John Sullivan doesn't know if there's a proper distincition between a regular reporter and an investigative reporter.
"We say it because it's easier to let people know the scope of your work," he said. "But the reality is that many reporters do a lot of the things that investigative reporters do everyday."
One of the keys of what makes an investigative reporter is the objective of their work.
"We look for wrongdoing," Sullivan said. "We look for harm. We're analyzing a problem. We're trying to determine what is the true state of this agency, and so we're usually trying to determine, 'Is there something wrong here?' And, I think a lot of reporters do that, but I think a lot of reporters also do lots of other types of stories too. Investigative reporters focus mainly on those things."
Sullivan is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative reporter. He was part of The Philadelphia Inquirer's team that won the public service prize for a series of articles about the under-reported school violence in the Philadelphia school system.
Following a stint teaching investigative reporting at Northwestern University's Medill School, Sullivan moved to Washington, D.C., to take up three jobs in one — as a reporter for The Washington Post, a journalist in residence at American University's School of Communication and a senior editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop.
He sat down with It's All Journalism producers Michael O'Connell and Julia O'Donoghue to talk about this new gig and what goes into being an investigative reporter.
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