Brant Houston’s goal was simple when he graduated from college. The English literature major just wanted to be paid to write. But Houston never set out to be a reporter.

Houston had a friend, Mark Merenda, who led a small daily newspaper outside of Boston. Merenda knew Houston could write and had steeped himself in the sports world, even having played basketball himself. Houston soon found himself writing sports features. There was also a school board in Winchester, Massachusetts, that needed coverage.

“I thought, I’ll do that until I figure out what I really want to do and, within a year, I ended up doing some small investigative stories – and I was hooked,” Houston said.

Houston has nurtured his interest with investigative journalism ever since. He currently serves as the Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

But his roots in investigative journalism can largely be traced to his school board reporting role back in Massachusetts. At the time, for example, Houston received a tip that the only Black teacher in the high school had been driven out by students who allegedly had chanted racial epithets at her. 

“Remember, this was the year that [the movie] 'All the President’s Men' had come out and people were excited about investigative reporting,” Houston said.

He was determined to learn if the rumors were true. After trying multiple times to reach the teacher by phone, Houston tracked down her address, and was able to confirm the accuracy of the story, in part by talking over a glass of Scotch whisky with the teacher's husband, a former Marine.

“I broke that story and pretty soon the Boston Globe was out covering [it], the Justice Department came in looking at civil rights questions and it was like 'wow, you know, journalism can really have an impact,' and it was exciting and challenging to do that kind of work. So I just kept doing it,” Houston said.

Building CU-CitizenAccess

CU-CitizenAccess, an online newsroom fueled by student reporting at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, is an apt home for Houston to instill these skills into the next generation of reporters. Houston co-founded and launched the newsroom in 2009.

It all started with a simple idea: Houston wanted to give students at the university an opportunity to get their work out into the world.

“The whole thing about journalism is getting stories out into the public and getting feedback, maybe corrections or new understandings, and that’s part of the educational process,” said Houston.

“At that point, every newspaper, broadcast station, had a very active website. So, ok, you can do that without a whole lot of investment,” he said, noting a website could be made very quickly.

But Houston did need money to pay some part-time reporters and a part-time editor. He tapped funds from a community foundation grant that gave $50,000 and the Knight Foundation doubled the amount. The university also stepped in with $30,000 for three years.

While Houston no longer has the university’s financial support, his Knight research funds and private donor funds help.

Houston’s role in CU-CitizenAccess covers “everything,” he said with a laugh.

“I’m sort of like a part-time executive director of a nonprofit newsroom in that I’m looking for funds whenever I can attract them…I help plan and originate the stories,” Houston said.

He also works closely with the part-time managing editor, Dylan Tiger, to talk through the website layout and fact-checking process.The students in Houston’s reporting class run out of the CU-CitizenAccess newsroom often produce the articles found on the website. 

The students in the class are dedicated to producing short and long-term stories throughout the semester and building their portfolio.

“We’re meeting once a week. We’re communicating more, looking at stories that maybe weren’t finished in another class and with two or three phone calls and maybe one more Freedom of Information Act request, will be finished off,” Houston said. 

“They’ve got their own topic interest," he said of the students. "One is looking at healthcare, for example, another is into justice, another is into worker safety,  for example, and another one is into bad properties and abandoned buildings,” he said. “So they will do hopefully a few stories, one particularly in-depth, and others that just don’t take as long. So it’s sort of like beat reporting.”

Houston’s students from his other classes, Public Affairs Reporting, Data Journalism, and Investigative Journalism, also contribute work to the newsroom. Freelancers and alums submit stories, as well.

Houston’s future hope for CU-CitizenAccess is to build the equivalent of a part-time staff from student reporters.

“We’re the only people who publish restaurant inspections, public salaries outside the university. It  goes on and on,” Houston said. “University newsrooms are no longer a supplement. They are no longer an adjunct. They are incredibly important for communities to have any idea of what’s going on,” Houston said.