Georgetown University's Pearl Project has enabled students to learn the techniques and methods of the best of traditional investigative journalism as well as cutting edge computer-assisted reporting techniques.

Our faculty-student investigation has broken new ground in reporting the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, interviewing current and former officials from the FBI, the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, government and law enforcement. The course has been a life-transforming educational and professional experience for the professors, students and volunteers involved in the project. We are deeply grateful to the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation for believing in the vision with which we launched the project. We could not have realized the success we have seen without the support of the foundation.

We plan to create a center to honor and carry on the work of a slain journalist or a journalist in peril. The center will:

• Train undergraduate and graduate students in the traditions, ethics and highly-skilled reporting practices of investigative reporting;
• Promote experiential journalism pedagogy practices and become a model for other university-based investigative projects and;
• Provide a safe haven for journalists who have experienced a lack of press freedom in the form of censorship, threat to personal safety or other methods of intimidation or recrimination.

There is a pressing need for the creation of a center such as this. Journalists are being killed or threatened at record numbers in the world today, and it's critical that we send a clear message that we will not be deterred. Also, investigative reporting efforts are fading in the new world of media consolidation, and it's vital that we keep this important expression of journalism flourishing.

At our center, journalists at risk in their home country because of press freedom issues will come here each year to finish their investigative work as fellows, working with a team of students. For those journalists slain in action, either on the battlefield or a street corner, a team of students will be assembled and led by a veteran journalist to finish those journalists' work or to investigate their deaths. The pedagogical and journalistic approach of the center's work will be modeled after the Pearl Project.

Influenced by the ideal of helping individuals become who they were meant to be, we believe that investigative journalism is a calling. Practiced in its truest, purest form, we consider investigation reporting a noble enterprise worthy of the next generation of the best and brightest student journalists.

The center will promote global free speech and will recognize the work that journalists have done in the name of social justice and democracy. Through training conferences, semester-long class projects, interactive media forums, seminars, panels, publications, teaching and training manuals and public brainstorming sessions, the center will work towards promoting a world in which journalists are free to move about the globe safely in the pursuit of truth.

For journalists living in dangerous, repressive or fragile civil societies in which freedom of the press is not yet recognized as a fundamental right, the center will be a safe haven in which to do their work. For our colleagues who have fallen, the center will honor them in the best way we know how: by continuing their work. And for our next generation of investigative reporters, the center will be a training ground.

For all, the center will keep alive the rich tradition of investigative journalism. It will serve as an insurance policy for the work of journalists everywhere.