Lyra Mckee (@LyraMcKee) is a Northern Irish investigative reporter and entrepreneur.

At the start of July she is launching a new quarterly longform journalism magazine, The Muckraker Report, which will be funded 100% by it’s readers.

What led to the creation of the Muckraker Report?

Honestly, I just love investigative journalism. Ever since I was 16 or 17, it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. By the time I went to university, the world recession had hit and the industry was on its knees. There was just no guarantee that I’d be able to find employment after university – unless you count working in Primark as employment. So I dropped out and started experimenting with different business models and ideas. Nothing worked and after a while, I was burnt out so I took about 8 months out to try other things but nothing spoke to my soul the way journalism does. It makes me happy.

I set up a blog called The Muckraker just so I could have an outlet for my investigative reporting. It became quite popular. Having worked as a freelancer for a few years, I knew that news media in NI are shy of holding people in Stormont to account because government job ads are one of their main sources of revenue. There’s a growing middle class in Northern Ireland that sees this and is frustrated with the lack of aggressive news coverage. I want to make a living doing what I love so I thought, why not start a magazine and sell it to them?

I should note – as I always do – that there are exceptions to the status quo. People doing great things like The Detail, the BBC’s Darragh MacIntyre and UTV’s Chris Moore.

What makes the Muckraker Report different?

It will be purely an investigative magazine. No “analysis” or “opinion”; just scoops. That’s what we’re aiming for anyways.

Also, we refuse to accept advertising of any kind – we will be completely funded by our readers. Advertising creates conflicts. Maybe this move is a mistake but even if it is and we fail because of it, at least I can say we stood by what we believed in and didn’t compromise our integrity or our principles.

What was wrong with the old way of doing things?

Under the old way of doing things, the only people held to account were the paramilitaries. The people in political power were/are not. We want to change that.

“This country is rife with corruption and if we don’t expose it, it will continue to be that way for our children and our grandchildren.”

I was speaking to the first Editor I ever worked under recently and she said, “You’re printing everything the newspapers are afraid to print, what’s your legal strategy?”. Honestly – our strategy is to get it right. If you have rock hard evidence to back up what you’re saying, a lawyer will not fancy his chances against you in court. Even if he does, I’d rather stand up for what I believe in and lose a case and have to shut the magazine down than sit around and do nothing. That’s the problem – everyone is scared of standing up and speaking out. Someone has to, though. This country is rife with corruption and if we don’t expose it, it will continue to be that way for our children and our grandchildren.

Where do you envision the Muckraker Report being in a years time?

In a year’s time, I hope it’s still around and that we’re breaking huge stories. I also hope that we’ll have enough subscribers to allow me to pay our volunteers who work tirelessly on the sit e.

How about five years time?

I’m really not sure where TMR will be in 5 years time. I hope it’s still around. We have a mammouth task ahead of us and all we’re thinking about is survival so it’s hard to imagine where we’ll be five years down the road. My dream is that in 5 years time, we’ll still be around but that other competitors will have sprouted up, other alternative magazines asking tough questions of those in power. That way, we can collectively create a watchdog culture.

How will you define success?

If we can investigate stories for months and years on end – and still manage to feed ourselves at the end of the month – I will consider TMR a success.

Why a quarterly publication?

Investigative journalism takes so long to do. In fact, we’re already wondering if we should push publishing back until every 4 months – or abandon the schedule altogether. We don’t want to compromise the quality of our stories by forcing ourselves to conform to a timeline. Some stories take weeks to uncover; others take months and years. I’m worried that a set schedule will place too much pressure on us.

We’ve also had endless debates about what the format should look like – rather than a collection of small snippets, should we have 2,000-30,000 word stories? Or both? Right now, we’ve settled on producing longform stories. We may decide to abandon the word “magazine” altogether because a magazine has a set schedule and I think we’d like to be more a hybrid of a magazine/book publisher.

The problem is the economics of publishing. You need to publish content regularly in order to make sales and stay afloat. Investigative journalism takes a lot of time so publishing regularly is hard – and that’s why it’s so hard to become sustainable. No one has figured out the sustainability/business model question yet so we don’t have anyone we can follow/copy/imitate – we’re literally figuring it out as we go along, mainly by making mistakes and realising, “Damn, we shouldn’t have done x, we should have done y.”

Do you feel that there is a lack of good journalism in the mainstream Northern Irish media?

I think there’s certainly a lack of good investigative journalism. And it would also be fair to say there’s a lack of good journalism in general but that’s a pattern playing out in news outlets across the world. We haven’t adapted to the changes brought about by the rise of the Internet. I don’t envy anyone doing breaking/daily coverage. It’s basically reactionary reporting and I don’t know that I could do a better job myself when faced with the constant pressure to publish before your competitors.

“I think there’s certainly a lack of good investigative journalism.”

Is this problem exclusive to print/written journalism?

No, certainly not.

How would you fix it?

Honestly, I think I’d be lying if I said I had the answer. I do think that the mainstream media needs to stop focusing on so many different beats, though. Online news consumers tend to gravitate towards niche sites. For example, if I really want to keep up on what’s happening on Syria, I’ll visit a site like Syria Deeply. The problem with the mainstream media is that they’re a jack of all trades and master of none. It’s not enough to have one beat reporter anymore – unless your area of coverage is very narrow. What’s more, it’s those niche news junkies that are willing to pay for premium content.

What motivates you to work on a story?

I have to. It’s just in me. I have a need to ask questions.

There’s two themes running through every story that keeps me up at night, though: 1) People in power covering something up, and 2) people in power committing injustices against those with no power.

How does social media affect your work as a journalist?

It’s wonderful. It adds a pressure to break scoops because you’re keenly aware that your readers are watching and waiting – which can be hard to cope with – but it also lets me talk directly to the people who read my work. The egomaniac in me likes that.

Do you have any role models?

Chris Moore – who wrote the definitive account of what really happened at Kincora Boys Home – is one of my heroes. As a child, I used to get sent upstairs to watch UTV Insight (the show he presented) every week because it clashed with Eastenders! Chris has this wonderful knack of getting people to open up to him. I wish I could be like that.

I’m also a huge fan of Michael Hastings and Jeremy Scahill, two American reporters who are just constantly challenging the Obama administration. They are the Woodward and Bernstein of my generation, although I don’t think they receive enough recognition for their work – Scahill especially, as he tends to stay away from the mainstream news outlets. I envy Hasting’s writing style – he has this habit of sucking the reader into the room with him, wherever he is. I wish I could write like that.

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

I’m stuck between the ability to fly and the ability to be invisible. Invisibility would allow me to sneak into Stormont and sit in the room with Peter and Marty next time they have an important meeting. On the other hand, flying means I could go on holiday to Spain for a week without having to buy a plane ticket.