What can I pass on – of any possible value -- about this story? I thought hard about that question before penning this piece. I suppose others will write about the obstacles and challenges they faced in their intrepid search for the truth. Others will, no doubt, write about the glory of computer-assisted reporting, spreadsheets and how to yield a nugget of gold from a well-crafted, access-to-information request. Still others may write about the old reliables – the need for more time, patient editors and money to produce award-winning “investigative journalism.”

I offer, as is my nature, a few unorthodox bits of advice. You can take it or leave it. The choice is entirely yours.

First, investigative journalism is very much a people business. If you don’t know how to establish trust, be polite, generous and simply listen to people, you should immediately abandon this trade.

Too many reporters just take, take, and take; they invade lives, take what they need or think they need and depart as quickly as they arrived, leaving nothing of themselves behind. That is a recipe for failure and there are too many reporters who practice that petty brand of journalism.

To be a good reporter, you have to give something of yourself. It’s not a technique or a ploy to pry information out of people. What I’m trying to describe is an approach to journalism. Most people I’ve encountered during my long career know a bullshit artist when they meet one. They can discern a reporter who is simply there to take.

And, invariably, people will not give that kind of reporter anything of value. Instead, they will bide their time, tolerate the reporter and flush him or her from their lives as soon as the hack inevitably disappears.

On the other hand, if you offer up something of yourself, search for something in common with the person you are talking to, share your disappointments, successes and hopes, talk about anything but the story, then you are establishing some measure of trust and that is the first step to allowing people to tell you extraordinary things. The kind of wondrous, revelatory, amazing, enlightening things that you will never find in a document, database or spreadsheet. I know documents are useful, but people, I believe, are a much better, wiser and eloquent source of information.

Second, learn to ask a clear, short, open-ended question, and then just listen. Once you have built a connection ― and like any relationship, this takes time and effort ― you have to shut up and allow people to tell their stories. I am dumbfounded by the number of reporters who have not yet mastered that most basic and most fundamental skill. They ramble on, drenching the person being interviewed with a flood of unnecessary words. Keep your questions short and begin them with ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ and let the Pandora‘s box open to your delight.

This story could have been titled “The Mennonite Mob Redux.” I first encountered drug-dealing Old Colony Mennonites in the early 1990s as an associate producer with the CBC television program the fifth estate. At the time, a U.S. Customs source tipped me to the story and I began a three-month odyssey into perhaps the most bizarre story I have ever worked on.

More than a decade later, the same source told me that much had changed and that I should take another stab at the story, updating the tale by revealing how Mennonite drug lords were becoming increasingly involved in cocaine trafficking, establishing links to the Hells Angels and getting more lethal, turning their sullied hands to contract killings.

All rich stuff for another story, to be sure. But there was another, more personal reason why I returned to the story. I wanted to reclaim it as my own; not as an exercise in self-aggrandizement, but as a necessary step in my still-evolving career as a reporter.

From the late 1980s to the late 1990s, I worked as a researcher, an associate producer and finally a producer at CBC and CTV. I made a deal during those years, a deal that I grew very uncomfortable with; in return for doing what I loved, I had to participate in what I call “journalism by ventriloquism.” I allowed my work to be appropriated and told by others. I know that many of my former colleagues – some of whom I admire - will rankle at that glib-sounding phrase, but in their heart of hearts they know there is more than a morsel of truth to it.

This all leads to my final and likely controversial bit of advice. To the scores of researchers, associate producers, chase producers and producers in broadcast journalism: get out the moment you can.

To my way of thinking, you cannot really call yourself a journalist until your name is attached to your stories. Don’t compromise for the sake of a paycheck or an impressive-looking calling card. If you have to stay, stay for only as long as you have to and then be sure to make your own name, with all the responsibility, accountability, disappointments, risks and rewards that come with being a reporter. Don’t fall into the trap of allowing money, awards, and titles to stand as substitutes for being a reporter.

When I wrote my first story for The Globe and Mail in early July 1999, it was the most gratifying day of my working life. I had taken a hefty cut in pay, but I had finally abandoned the journalistic charade that I had willingly participated in for almost a decade. Since that day, I have written hundreds of stories, a book and magazine articles, with my name proudly affixed to them all.

For me, writing the Wages of Sin with my dear friend Susan Bourette was another symbolic and important act in my transformation from a worker bee to a full-fledged reporter. To win an award for doing it just made it all the more sweet.

If you’re interested in reading the article, please click on: (Andrew Mitrovica) Saturday Night Magazine.htm

In addition to his writing, Andrew Mitrovica teaches journalism at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont. He has written one book and is working on a second. Andrew is also a contributing editor at Walrus magazine.