Reporter Interview-Riepenhoff

In the time span of May 2012 to December 2012 a three part series published by the Columbus Dispatch. The main focus of the series was to uncover credit errors commonly made on credit reports annually. The series found that millions of people have been affected by errors on their credit reports and given no real resolution for making corrections to their credit information. Although attempting to uncover stories of individuals affected by credit errors would result in multiple reports. However, the true research came 2 years earlier in 2010 when investigative reporters Jill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner began searching for additional information. According to Jill Riepenhoff, the story came from speaking to a former manager who had experienced an issue due to the spelling of her name. Throughout the series the goal was not so much to seek out the issues and the scars that credit reporting errors caused but to place a face to millions of Americans who had placed complaints regarding these errors.

Behind the reporting of this case were investigator reporters Mike Wagner and Jill Riepenhoff, I was allowed the opportunity to speak with Ms. Riepenhoff who insisted I call her Jill regarding the process taken to capture a story so common to many all around the country. After reading the Columbus Dispatch, “Credit Scars” series, I initially wanted to learn more about Jill’s experience as an investigative reporter. Jill has been working for the Columbus Dispatch for 29 years ago beginning her career at the Dispatch in 1985 back before the push for digital technology in the production of Newspapers. However, Jill has been working on her current investigative team since 2004. She says for the most part they are allowed time to spend on investigative projects such as “Credit Scars”. Jill says that the research process took, “about one year or a little longer.” The initial idea behind the story was only to produce one story, however, in the end resulted in a three part series. There were some moments in the initial research of public records information that caused Jill and her investigative partner Wagner to stop research was an even that occurred regarding a scandal surrounding the OSU football head coach news that rocked the Big Ten team and the city. Jill and Wagner had to stop research to focus on the investigation and reporting of that story.  This story halted the research process for about three or four months before they were able to continue research on the “Credit Scars” series.

As an investigative reporter for nearly three decades Jill found it important to seek out a story like this because it would be something that is important to readers. Jill and her partner Wagner began their research at the Ohio Attorney General Complaints for Credit Bureau. Hundreds of complaints regarding credit report errors and issues concerning errors found on credit scores were found there. Jill went about requesting a spreadsheet with this information, these spreadsheets covered the details of each complaint, and however, much of the information contained any personal information. In gathering this information they made the decision to branch out and explore Credit report complaints from all 50 states through their appropriate Attorney’s Generals office. Through research they found that some states held complaints in different departments, about half of the state’s consumer reports are not considered public records and others required a fee be paid for the information to be, in turn Jill found they needed to attempt to negotiate these fees in order to retrieve the information. Jill shared that, “Georgia wanted $5,000” in fees to provide consumer reports regarding credit reports. A fee they were not able to negotiate which was found to be unfortunate because the state of Georgia served as the home state for Equifax, a major credit bureau. When the attempt was made to collect information from the state of New Jersey, they reached another road block when they learned that the Attorney General in that state shipped their complaints directly to the state of Georgia as they did not handle consumer complaints regarding credit reporting errors. Although they used the Freedom of Information Act for each state to request information, these reports and complaint documents still contained no personal information, or used the information for analyzing, hindering their attempts to actually speak with the individuals who filed the complaints.

As a team Jill and her partner Wagner worked closely together on the series. Jill took the lead on the research aspect of the story. Most of her time spent reading dense and often difficult to decipher, she spent time reading through 60,000 plus pieces of paper explaining only in data terms what the information meant. Wagner spent more time interviewing individuals who had been affected by credit reporting errors, placing names and faces to the stories that the information collected had not.

Due to the extent of research done on this series, and the expansion from local to national in attempting to collect information in all 50 states, the writing process was not easy. The important measures taken during the writing process on this story was outlining the story, they talked about how many days they would have for each topic of the day. They both joined together to make a decision as to which story would mesh well with the topic of the day rather it would be an issue of mixed files due to name, date of birth, or similar errors, would they include stories in cases involving Identity Theft or cases involving children. Decisions such as “what is this thing going to look like?” Each portion of the series were about a three to five day timespan. When making a decision of stories to include before beginning to write they considered what data supported the information they planned to include, Jill and Wagner spent time attempting to mesh the interviews and the data to paint a strong story. Jill mentions that they once spent an hour attempting to determine rather or not they should use a particular word in the series, although she laughs about it now, it played a major role in the way they considered writing the series and what the effects would be.

In a series such as “Credit Scars” where a major part was spent on research, and dealing with attempting to request information from 50 states, most of the road blocks were found in the very beginning of the research process. Learning that the complaints and information received contained no personal information created a road block because the complaints essentially contained no faces. However, Jill and her partner Wagner overcame these obstacles by searching in other places to tell the stories, in essence facing obstacles head on. Jill found that she would not have done anything differently, “you always go back I could have done things differently, everybody does it that just human nature.”