{"id":6862,"date":"2016-02-16T11:22:27","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T16:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/?p=6862"},"modified":"2016-03-28T12:07:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T16:07:43","slug":"kristen-lombardi-95-center-for-public-integrity","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/articles\/kristen-lombardi-95-center-for-public-integrity\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristen Lombardi \u201995, Center for Public Integrity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Senior
Senior Reporter, Center for Public Integrity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

What has your career\/education path been like since graduating?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

I worked for a small community newspaper chain immediately after I graduated from the master’s program<\/a> at BU’s College of Communication, in 1995, learning how to develop sources and cover government basics in the suburbs of Boston. From there, I worked for many years at the now (sadly) defunct Phoenix alternative newspaper (both for Worcester and Boston), and cut my chops as a beat and an investigative reporter. I moved onto the Village Voice and then, in 2007, landed at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to investigative reporting in the public interest. I have had an opportunity to do meaningful journalism all along the way. I can honestly say that, as an investigative reporter, there is no better profession.<\/p>\n

\n

Why did you choose your particular field of study at COM?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

I focused on print journalism \u2014 it was either print or broadcast journalism then and, for me, print has always been where it’s at. I took as many narrative journalism and magazine writing classes as I could both semesters in my year at BU’s graduate program to try to perfect the art of long-form narrative journalism. While people in our business talk a lot about new forms of story-telling, I still believe that some of the most powerful, moving and consequential pieces of journalism today are told via the written word.<\/p>\n

\n

What skills from the program have you found most valuable?<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

I enrolled in COM’s graduate journalism program back in the mid-1990s, when the Internet was almost a novelty. Certainly, there was no sense of the disruption the web would cause print journalism. I remember taking a class featuring Netscape as primarily a research tool. Because of this rapidly changing technological landscape, I am sure the program I experienced is very different today. So much of what I learned from the program that I still value today has to do with the intensive narrative-writing classes I took. There’s no doubt in my mind I am a better writer and editor because of the grueling narrative-journalism classes I took from such professors as Mark Kramer, who I believe still runs the BU Narrative Conference. As a working journalist for 20 years now, I have yet to receive the kind of intense attention to improving my writing that I had the privilege receiving as a graduate student at BU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What has your career\/education path been like since graduating? I worked for a small community newspaper chain immediately after I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10949,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[53,930,771,956,961,6,957,22,960,958,959],"bu-publication":[],"discipline-type":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/6862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10949"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/6862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7242,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/6862\/revisions\/7242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6862"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=6862"},{"taxonomy":"discipline-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/discipline-type?post=6862"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=6862"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=6862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}