In the first of her new "Backstory" series, Gill Moodie writes for journalism.co.za:

Investigative journalism is sexy in South Africa again and that's a good thing for journalism and the country but mounting big national investigations is easier said than done. Neither of the new investigative units set up last year by Media24 and Independent Newspapers have too much to show for themselves as yet and we will see what big stories the Mail & Guardian new amaBhungane investigative unit will come up with.

I would venture that specialised investigative units tend to battle as any seasoned hack will tell you that the big stories come from the little stories, the bits and pieces you pick up as you interview people and get to know sources better. Often these are extraneous to the story at hand and mentioned as an aside or offered as a fruity little piece of gossip.

So it is heartening and exciting that an investigation involving journalists across the country and from different media houses into conflicts of interest in the preparation for the Soccer World Cup has produced such excellent results. Funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa and run by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), the investigations have resulted in a book which is a fascinating peek into the dodgy dealings masked by SAA's opaque tender system “and big breaking stories in the participating newspapers at the time of the book's launch. (Click here to read the book, 'Player and Referee: Conflicting Interests and the 2010 FIFA World Cup' which is free online at the ISS's website.)

Among other things, the journalists involved Rob Rose of the Sunday Times; Eddie Botha and Gcina Ntsaluba at the Daily Dispatch; the Mail & Guardian's Sam Sole and Stefaans Brummer; freelancer Karen Schoonbee and the British anti-Fifa crusader Andrew Jennings “ unearthed:

That the City of Johannesburg has effectively ceded the profits of  the Soccer City stadium to a little known stadium-management company and the possibility of empowerment fronting at the company. (Click here to read the Sunday Times splash by Rose that came out of the investigation.)

Journalistically, this project produced hot stuff from evidence of nefarious business dealings to the big picture stuff, the tension between Fifa's corporate interests versus those of the host nation and the South African public.

However, this project didn't start with the little stories but rather with the journalists being asked in March last year by ISS senior researcher Collette Schulz Herzenberg, who co-ordinated the investigations and edited the book, to look into conflicts of interest starting with the construction of the various World Cup stadiums.

Schulz Herzenberg says the World Cup investigations form part of a bigger three-year project funded by the Open Society Foundation to look into conflicts of interest in public life. Besides being available for free on the web, the resulting book or 'monograph' as the ISS terms it has been sent out to the ISS's mailing list that includes policy makers. The institute is looking into getting it into bookstores such as the national Exclusive Books chain.

"We wanted to use the World Cup as a case study," says Schulz Herzenberg, "and there were a number of reasons why we felt that the World Cup as a mega-event could do just that.

"Initially, we had quite a narrow concept of where (conflicts of interest) might be and we were thinking around construction tenders etc... Although Rob (Rose) and others found questionable tendering and other contracts (to do with the stadiums), we also very quickly realised that conflicts of interest could be explored along the public-interest dimension (such as looking at Fifa's corporate interests versus those of the host country)."

In some instances, such as with Botha and Ntsaluba in the Eastern Cape, no irregularities could be found from looking into the stadiums.

"Im not saying there wasn't anything untoward happening (with the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in PE)," says Botha, "but we certainly could not find anything that looked irregular. But there are so many subcontractors that it's possible some things could have been going on somewhere."

And this after Botha and Ntsaluba spent quite some time travelling to Port Elizabeth from East London to sniff around and talk to all the stakeholders involved in the building of the Port Elizabeth stadium. In fact, the two came up with two World Cup stories in PE that were, in the end, rejected by the ISS.  Then the gods of journalism smiled on Botha and an anonymous package was delivered to the Daily Dispatch containing the minutes of an Eastern Cape Tourism Board adjudication committee on World Cup branding and advertising. The Mthatha stadium saga also started with leaked information to Botha as did Rose's investigation into the tender for the management contract of Soccer City.

If this sounds like a bit of luck, it isn't. In the parlance of newsrooms, it's called 'shaking the tree'. As Botha and Rose systematically worked through their lists of stakeholders and possible sources, they would have come on to the radar screen of someone involved in the tender processes who felt uncomfortable about how they went. To whom do you leak the documents then? To the journalist asking the questions, of course.

Further, Botha and Rose have established their reputations with their newspapers readers as reporters who will wade into complicated business dealings to fight for the little guys. Those that leaked the information would have known something would be done with it.

For Schulz Herzenberg, having experienced investigative reporters on board was crucial and helped mightily in the writing of the book too. When the ISS asked lawyers to look at the edited manuscript to check for possible defamation, very few changes were made and those that were, were small ones. In addition, the requirement that the participating journalists make extensive endnotes helped on this score.

This was a lengthy project for all involved and challenging, not least because the tendering system in South Africa is so secretive that opposition politicians - let alone the journalists - find it difficult to access information.

For Botha, writing in a narrative style rather than a straight breaking hard-news story was a big learning curve and making such extensive endnotes was a trial, he says.

"I have never written anything that required footnotes... and in fact, I didn'teven know the difference between footnotes and endnotes," he says with a laugh. "In the end they were happy with the final draft but it was difficult with two people (Botha and Ntsaluba) working on the same thing and, in the end, I wrote it.

"The writing was quite difficult because there were so many documents and you've got to make sure of your references and so on... At one stage I wondered if the publication would ever see the light of day."

It is tricky to get journalists used to seeing their stories published within a daily or weekly cycle as their deadlines demand, to work on such lengthy projects without getting bored. So why did this project work so well? As Rose says: "All those chapters there, all this information wouldn't have been found if Collette hadn't called us together and said: “This is the opportunity and the time and it's something we'¢ve got to look at."

"Journalists by their nature tend to flit from week to week and story to story so there would never been a concerted effort," he says.

I think it worked chiefly because of two reasons:

1. The marriage of academics and experienced investigative journalists

 Clearly, investigating a mega-event such as the World Cup requires a multi-pronged attack on a national level over a long period of time. Schulz Herzenberg had the foresight to initiate these investigations early last year  and then co-ordinated the efforts of the investigative reporters. The demands of daily and weekly deadlines often means that news rooms find it hard to lift their heads above the fray and go after really big stories. The ISS performed this role and then demanded rigorous referencing that added oodles of credibility. The ISS, on the other hand, would have struggled to perform the step-by-step gumshoe detective work of the investigative journalists as these skills are developed and mastered over many years.

2. Everybody got something out of it

The ISS was able to pay the participating newspapers (or freelancers) for their time, allowing the reporters to work on the stories in newsroom time. Although the ISS got the full investigations to publish in book form, the newspapers got to publish the breaking news stories that arose from the investigations to coincide with the book's launch.

Now hear ye, hear ye, hacks! The really good news is that there's more to come as Schulz Herzenberg says the next big project is look into and analyse tendering in South Africa. With tenderpreneurs such as the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema making headlines, this next project will surely help to explain to us all why our tender system or lack of a system is so up the pole and it goes to the heart of the corruption that is threatening to cripple our country.

DISCLAIMER: Moodie's husband is the editor of the Daily Dispatch.

* The "Backstory" series is exclusive to journalism.co.za. Gill Moodie is a freelance journalist who is also responsible for the website http://www.grubstreet.co.za