The amount of effort Sally Herships put into her first investigative journalism piece….. well, it’s enough to drive you to smoke!

“The Five Percent Rule” is Sally’s 10-month-long foray into investigative reporting, a story on the under-pricing of tobacco on military bases. The piece aired on Marketplace in June of 2011 as part of a series on tobacco.

On this edition of HowSound, Sally talks about some of her behind-the-scenes work on the project. It’s a bit startling, actually. Huge spreadsheets, hundreds of phone calls…. even a new pair of special glasses to prevent the headaches she was getting from looking at a computer screen too long.

Sally says she received assistance from I.R.E. — Investigative Reporters and Editors. They were a tremendous help for this kind of deep reporting and exacting work.

Have a listen then let us know about your investigative work.

Here’s Sally’s blog for “The Five Percent Rule.” And, no, Sally doesn’t smoke.

This edition of HowSound was produced on Hindenburg software rather than ProTools, my usual audio editor of choice for a good dozen years. I haven’t switched to Hindenburg, but I sure like it a lot.