Intrepid Reporter

Good, bad, I'm the girl with the camera.

Thatcher: Is that really your idea of how to run a newspaper?
Kane: I don't know how to run a newspaper, Mr. Thatcher, I just try everything I can think of.

—Citizen Kane

An Intrepid Reporter is an investigative journalist who goes out and finds stories, rather than letting them come to him or her. Sometimes this seems to be the only kind of reporter used in fiction. A character's actual assignment might be something like "tell the readers who won the dog show," or "write a puff piece on our best advertiser," but something about the setup will inevitably spark a full-scale investigation.

This kind of reporter is also known, in fiction, for getting far more involved in their stories than is usually recommended for real journalists. There might be a brief mention of "objectivity" or warning against "getting too emotionally involved," but if there's a Corrupt Corporate Executive to bring down, secret villainy to expose, or a Damsel in Distress to rescue, the Intrepid Reporter will be right in there taking an active hand. Sometimes the term "muckraker" is used for this kind of journalists, or "liberal muckraking bastard" if the target is a Republican. Expect occasional examples of Off the Record information, whether or not they violate their journalistic ethics and reveal it.

Most often, the Intrepid Reporter is a protagonist, or at least on the side of the angels. Expect a lot of speeches about "the Truth", "Freedom of the Press" and "the People have a right to know." But they can also be Love Interests, antagonists, or even villains. After all, the lure of that big scoop can lead to rushing into danger (not that they all mind that), trying to expose secrets the protagonists would rather not have public, or even fudging the facts to make a juicier story.

When the Intrepid Reporter isn't a major character, he or she often ends up interviewing Mr. Exposition (repeatedly, in some cases).

The teenage version of this is the School Newspaper Newshound. A female Intrepid Reporter has a good chance of being a Hot Scoop as well. The Jerkass or Evil Counterpart is the Paparazzi. If an Intrepid Reporter has no name, and/or is clearly snooping around somewhere they really shouldn't be, they are most likely a Red Shirt Reporter as well. See also Da Editor and Going for the Big Scoop.

Examples of Intrepid Reporter include:

Anime and Manga

• Figure 17 features a reporter who stumbles across a dying meadow (caused by the Monster of the Week) and begins to investigate further.
• Okamura from Blood Plus, going so far as to follow the main characters around the world for his story.
• Yuusuke Tozawa from Witchblade.
• Tatsumi Saiga from Speed Grapher.
• Magic Users Club features two reporters investigating the magical powers of the main character.
• Hibiki from Macross II starts this way.
• Subverted twice in Monster. When a journalist tries to help Dr. Tenma stop a murder, he ends up becoming one of the victims. Later on we meet another journalist who seems to fit the bill... until we learn that his press pass is phony and that he's something else entirely.
• Aoi Hino from Cannon God Exaxxion. Lampshaded by the fact that the other, more level-headed members of the news team she's on think she's nuts. There's also her little sister, Akane who is determined to follow in her big sister's footsteps, but every attempt she makes to do so ends in disaster. Also subverts this trope by having another recurring news team who are much more realistic & down to Earth... who happen to be space aliens.
• Kinue Crossroads from Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Also, her and Saji's Disappeared Dad. They both were killed because they dug too far.
• Harvey Livingston from Ashita no Nadja doesn't look the part, but boy is he good at Obfuscating Stupidity...
• Goh 'Rocky' Mutsugi from Area 88: Photojournalist on the battlefields of North Africa. Shot down while out taking pictures, rescued by a Bedouin Rescue Service but forced to fight the chief, wins the fight with a Barehanded Blade Block, then goes out with a bang by ramming a tank with a Jeep when the camp is attacked. Oh, and survived all that, though he did lose a hand.
• Bernard Chatelet from Rose of Versailles, after he gets some Character Development. He was a Well-Intentioned Extremist with shades of Psycho for Hire beforehand, but his encounters with Oscar and Andre ( and how it's because of him that André loses an eye) make him re-think his ways.
• Kai Shiden in Zeta Gundam. Also, Beltochika Irma, after her Character Development
• Carly Nagisa from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, at least up until a very cruel turn of events.
• Suena Dalton from Toward the Terra. It helps that she happens to be personal friends with both The Hero and the antagonist.
• Michael Seebach from The Big O. before his transformation in "Schwarzwald".
• Hiyono from Spiral.
• Kazumi Asakura in Mahou Sensei Negima. She toes the line between Chaotic Neutral and the Token Evil Teammate at times. But she does have standards and won't continue going for stories if they'll make a lot of trouble for someone like Negi or Sayo.
  • The first anime had her head straight into Chaotic Good territory (her mercenary manga characterization around the Sayo arc was almost completely reversed, and Asakura looked EXTREMELY sympathetic by comparision in the first anime. The official manga waited a long while later before doing this.)
• Yuuka/Rhonda form the Pokémon anime.
  • Gabby and Ty were this in Pokémon Special as a result of seeing an attempt on Chairman Stone's Castform and life by Team Aqua and its subsequent thwarting by Sapphire.
• Zombie Powder gives us the most unorthodox Intrepid Reporter in fiction, ever, in the form of Wolfgangina. Period. How unorthodox, you ask? Her tripod is a cannon. No, really.
• Hajime Shibata from Hell Girl.
• Diethard Reid from Code Geass starts out as a reporter getting information about Zero into the public, and then joins the Black Knights as apparently its PR officer.
• Yoko of Rideback tries to be this, ignoring evacuation orders to try and get a scoop about the 'Rideback Girl'.
• Edolas Gajeel from the Fairy Tail anime.
• Susan Somers from the Venus Wars.

Comic Books

• Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen fill this role at the Daily Planet in The DCU, and editor Perry White was one before he got promoted.
  • Age of the Sentry parodies this by making the Sentry's alter ego Robert Reynolds an Intrepid Reporter... for an encyclopedia.
  • To complete the "Captain Ersatz of Superman has a less glamorous day job" cycle, Supreme is a comic book artist.
• Astro City's Samaritan's civilian identity is as a fact checker at the Astro City Rocket.
  • Also Irene Meriwether, who pursued news stories with almost as much determination as she pursued Atomicus.
• See also Iris West and Linda Park, journalist wives of the second and third Flashes respectively.
• Also Vicki Vale, Batman's Lois Lane ripoff love interest in the '50s and the Tim Burton movie. She still makes occasional cameos in The DCU as a TV news anchor, but is no longer associated with Batman.
  • As of Battle For The Cowl, she's back on the Gotham Gazette and back to trying to deduce Batman's secret identity. And she's succeeded.
    • Well, who couldn't?
• In 1938, Action Comics #1 introduced Scoop Scanlon, crusading reporter, but he never took off. He was probably overshadowed by one of the other characters.
• Ben Urich, formerly of the Daily Bugle in the Marvel Universe, now of Frontline. Likewise, his partner Sally Floyd. (Being "intrepid" does not necessarily mean you're good at your job.)
  • During his time on The Pulse, the Bugle's superhero supplement, Ben also worked with Jessica Jones and Terri Kidder. Kidder showed the dangers of being an Intrepid Reporter; her obsession with superhero stories got her killed.
• Tintin, of The Adventures of Tintin, is one of these, though you might have missed it if you haven't read the one volume where he actually gets around to filing a story.
  • This ambiguity is likely a result of a poor transition into the paperback format which most modern readers are more familiar with. Tintin was originally published in a suplement to the Belgian newspaper "The 20th Century". The idea was that he was a reporter who submitted his stories in comic form, so showing him interacting with members of the newspaper staff would have seemed redundant.
• Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan. A particularly Mary Sue-ish example in that he brings down an entire government with his stories, and absolutely no one can stop him.
• In Marvel's New Universe, reporter Andrew Chaser befriended Psi-Force member Tyrone Jessup and eventually wrote a book about the team.
• The classic newspaper comic strip Brenda Starr has its titular character in this role. Also, a frequent Damsel in Distress.
• Vic Sage A.K.A. The Question.
• Savoy from The Unwritten an Intrepid Reporter of the blogger variety. His modus operandi is infiltrating prisons to get the inside scoop on fresh detainees.
• Spirou and Fantasio are technically reporters, and they're definitely intrepid. Unlike Tintin, they can even be seen doing actual reporting once in a while.
• Uptown Girl is a Minneapolis-based reporter for the City Pages (in Real Life, a weekly paper) who gets involved in many weird cases. In issue #18, her friend Rocketman lampshades her habit of charging ahead to solve the problem of the day without sensibly calling the police to deal with it.

Fan Works

• Anrias in The Tainted Grimoire.
• Intrepid Reporters seem to show up regularly in the stories that make up the Drunkard's Walk: Lisa Vanette in Drunkard's Walk II is a major character, and Jitsuha Yoshi seems to be shaping up much the same in Drunkard's Walk S.

Film

• The classic example: All versions of The Front Page, especially Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday.
• Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts play two competing protagonists who both fit this trope in I Love Trouble.
• Parodied by the character Margo in Big Trouble in Little China. She desperately wants to be an Intrepid Reporter but just doesn't have what it takes.
• Torchy Blane, the character who inspired Lois Lane, from the Torchy series.
• Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow (2004). Polly Perkins, who isn't above sabotaging Sky Captain's plane to get a scoop, causing him to spend six months in a Manchurian death camp.
  • Unless she was lying to get what she thought was the truth out of him. And he might have lied in turn out of spite.
• The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961) is an apocalypse movie seen through the eyes of newspaper journalists working for the Daily Express. The protagonist is relegated to cub reporter duties because of his ongoing alcoholism, but he nevertheless digs up the story that the government is trying to suppress—that simultaneous nuclear tests have upset the tilt of the Earth. The ludicrous scientific premise is offset by the reality-based view of a newspaper at work, and it is rightly regarded as a classic sci-fi movie in Britain.
• Christy Colleran and John L. Sullivan IV in City Heat
• Jerry Thompson, the reporter who tries to find out the meaning of "rosebud" in Citizen Kane. And Kane himself during his younger years.
• Mariana in Man on Fire. Not only is she a reporter, but she is also romantically involved with a police inspector. Her actions in the film go far beyond those recommended for a reporter who intends to live through the day without being killed by those she exposes.
• Johnny Jones, Alfred Hitchcock's titular Foreign Correspondent.
• Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy.
• Robert Caulfield, Elliott Gould's character in Capricorn One. He uncovers the Government Conspiracy when his friend in NASA is Killed to Uphold the Masquerade.
• Woodward and Bernstein's characters (played by Will Ferrell and Bruce Mc Culloch) in the movie Dick were referred to by Richard Nixon (Dan Hedaya) as Liberal Muckraking Bastards. Also parodied, in that they're really just egocentric doofuses who kind of get lucky.
• Matilda Jeffries in Zoolander is a humorous example, and somewhat lampshaded by Derek when he tries to confront her.
• Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole features Chuck Tatum, an Intrepid Reporter who's a Manipulative Bastard; he doesn't just go after the news, he creates them. When he hears about a man trapped in a collapsed cave, he deliberately prolongs his rescue by manipulating the local authorities, just so he can report on it.
• In Shattered Glass, Stephen Glass views himself as an Intrepid Reporter and would love nothing more than for everyone else to think of him as one as well. He's nothing of the kind. However, Adam Penenberg, the journalist who exposed Glass, very much is.
• Kimberly Wells and Richard Adams (Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas) of The China Syndrome.
• Henry Hackett in The Paper is an intrepid editor, while McDougal is an intrepid columnist. Henry's wife Martha is the more conventional example of this trope.
• One of the most amazing scenes in We Were Soldiers is when war correspondent Joe Galloway voluntarily jumps aboard a helicopter which is taking soldiers into a combat zone where they are likely to be wiped out in short order. During the next day's fighting, Galloway tries to take photographs in the middle of a hail of bullets, after which Sgt. Plumley hands him an M-16 and warns him that there is "no such thing" as a non-combatant under the circumstances. This actually happened in real life.

Joe Galloway: You got room for one more?
"Snakes**t" Crandall: If you're crazy enough, hop in.

• Judge Dredd. Reporter Vartis Hammond is trying to find the reason for the rise in street crime. He discovers the existence of the Janus Project and is murdered in order to keep the secret.
• In the various Superman films, including the serial, Clark Kent, Lois Lane and sometimes Jimmy Olsen reprise their comic book counterparts' intrepidness.
• Lolly Parsons in The Cats Meow.

Literature

• Cameron "Buck" Williams of the Global Weekly magazine in Left Behind. He's something of a subversion of the trope, as when he discovers evidence of a murderous global conspiracy, Buck makes a Deal with the Devil to quash the story in exchange for his personal safety.
  • Humorously enough, this doesn't appear to be intentional, especially when you consider that he's a Mary Sue.
  • Not only that, he also ignores the biggest story ever in the process.
• Stephanie Kovacs in the Babylon Rising series. She is quickly promoted to Dark Mistress of the Corrupt Corporate Executive who is trying to discredit the hero.
• The Harry Potter books have an antagonist version of the Intrepid Reporter in the person of Rita Skeeter of the Daily Prophet. She doesn't let the facts get in the way of a juicy story, going beyond merely ignoring what interviewees actually tell her to actually putting words in their mouths.
  • Truth in Television: she is based on the British Newspapers, after all.
• William De Worde and his Girl Friday, Sacharissa Cripslock fill this role in several Discworld novels, starting with The Truth. As the only news reporters in one of the most newsworthy cities in the world, they keep very busy.
• Susan Rodriguez of The Dresden Files (book version). Unfortunately, her intrepidness led to lasting physical harm for her.
• Bill and Chris, in the series Athanor are led by an anonymous tipster to investigate a mysterious philanthropist going by "Arthur Pendragon." Once they realize just how big of a secret they've stumbled onto, though, they decide to change careers.
• Gregory McDonald's Irwin Maurice "Fletch" Fletcher is a giant of Intrepid Reporterdom.
• Kitty Norville is an Intrepid Radio Talk Show Host who frequently tracks down her own stories, and can get way too physically involved in them.
• Michael Liberty from the StarCraft novel "Liberty's Crusade" begins the novel in serious trouble - i.e., corrupt politician and mob bosses potentially assassinating him trouble - over his exposés on Confederate politics, which gets him sent out to the Colonies. His attempts to discover the truth don't stop there, of course, and almost get him killed at Anthem Base before he decides to tag along with the Sons of Korhal.
• In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Raoul Duke was with his attorney Dr.Gonzo (who may have been Samoan) to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race. However upon arriving in Vegas Duke and his attorney Dr.Gonzo (who may have been Samoan) found it to be imperative to get to the bottom of the American dream by any means necessary. (Including fraud, forgery, liberal drug consumption, and bribing maids to act as moles for hotel drug cartels)
• Rock In G. K. Chesterton's "The Scandal of Father Brown". Unfortunately, he has a few blind spots, resulting in his Malicious Slander of Father Brown, until the priest clears up a few issues.
• Jack Parlabane from Quite Ugly One Morning, Country of the Blind, Boiling a Frog, Be My Enemy and The Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, all by Christopher Brookmyre.
• Joe Buckley from 1634: The Galileo Affair finds himself to be the only trained journalist in an era dominated by propagandists, and sets out to Venice to find good stories. He's implied to actually be pretty good. Unfortunately, his name is Joe Buckley, and he's in a Baen book. He gets killed by Ducos after getting too close to said villain's real plot.
• Digby Driver in The Plague Dogs is an antagonistic (and downright evil) example. He uses underhanded means to get info, falsifies it when it suits him, spreads panic, and gets the army sent after the protagonists.
• All the main characters in the Newsflesh trilogy. This is basically the only way to gather news after a Zombie Apocalypse.
• In Death: Nadine Furst, very much. It almost got her killed in Glory In Death.
• In the novel Airframe, we meet field reporter Marty Rearan, but it subverted in that he's just a talking head. The real legwork is done by the show's producer, Jennifer Malone.

Live Action TV

• Carl Kolchak of Kolchak the Night Stalker fame.
• Both Maddie and Carla on Jonathan Creek qualify, falling somewhere between the good and bad versions of the trope. Maddie isn't adverse to a little breaking and entering or using the Bavarian Fire Drill to get a story, and Carla is a sensationalist television journalist.
• In the Covert Affairs episode "All the Right Friends", Annie Walker was assigned to be the US representative in a spy exchange. Only the one thought to be a spy was an Italian crusader-reporter who had been caught poking his nose in the business of people who did not want their business found out. Kind of like spies in fact. The US government in fact had no particular concern with him, except that where he was investigating made them assume he was an Italian spy and as Italians were official allies the best thing to do was exchange him and hush it up. The problem? It turned out that the reason the Italians wanted him back was not so they could debrief him and retire him. It was to make him disappear. He had embarrassing goodies that had nothing to do with Italy's interest or America's but would have destroyed several corrupt politicians and corrupt corporate executives and having him exchanged as a spy was a good way of getting hold of him. And probably discrediting past dispatches if that was needed.
• Julia Donovan in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Prometheus".
  • Subverted, as she was a member of a government black-ops group that was going to use the Prometheus as blackmail to get one of their leaders free (although admittedly she is unaware of her superiors' ulterior motives.)
  • Earlier in "Secrets," there was Armin Selig, who had a concrete scoop about the Stargate Program. He got hit by a car after confronting Jack with his suspicions. Never explicitly said, but Jack was left half-believing it was arranged.
• Jack McGee in The Incredible Hulk. If only he had a badge, he'd be Inspector Javert.
• Edward T. "Ned" Malone from Sir Arthur Conan Doyles the Lost World.
• In Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Smith started out this way but rapidly became more interested in saving the planet.
  • On her own spinoff show, Sarah Jane has returned to being a journalist, though she is far more interested in defending the Earth from aliens than getting a scoop. Luckily, the two tend to go hand-in-hand. Still, her job is usually just a device to get the plot of the week rolling.
• James Fullalove and Hugh Conrad from the fifties Quatermass serials.
• Mike Donovan from V.
  • A bigger example would be Kristine Walsh, who lost her objectivity so completely that she pretty much became the Minister of Propaganda for the Visitors. She changed her tune, however, about five seconds before she was fatally shot. In the A. C. Crispin novelization, she had a reputation for sensationalism and many people said, "(Paraphrasing)<Walter Cronkite?> wants the story and Kristine Walsh wants the GLORY."
• Cal McCaffrey and his fellow reporters in State of Play all fit the type, although they all avoid the stereotype of the lone crusader and rogue - by design, according to Paul Abbott. They might drink, have affairs, and employ less-than-ethical tactics, but they're not stupid about it.
• Played semi-straight in Alias in the first season, the character of Will Tippen is a reporter, idealistic and thus easily manipulated into a situation that is far over his head.
• In Hannah Montana, Miley constantly lives under threat of these people. This has resulted in a minor recurring character, an annoying paparazzi guy that is apparently desperate enough for a picture that he actually FOLLOWS HER HOME after a concert. In The Movie, another reporter hears Miley talking about her secret (that she is Hannah Montana), and becomes desperate to find out what the secret is. When he finally finds out and snaps a picture, his daughters make him change his mind.
• Lou Grant had a whole cadre of intrepid reporters, especially Joe Rossi and Billie Newman.
• In the Made for TV movie Special Bulletin, a reporter is told to get out of the way in case a terrorist home-made bomb turns out to actually be a nuclear weapon, but stays on the scene because he believes that they have more than an hour before it will detonate, not realizing that when the government assault team captures it, they make a mistake and set it off.
• Danny Concannon in The West Wing. Being the White House correspondent, he's supposed to be intrepid or people will accuse him of letting a second Watergate go by, which puts him in a bit of a tricky spot since he's good friends with the President, literally wrote the book on the First Lady and has a crush on the Press Secretary.
  • We also meet other intrepid reporters on that show, such as C.J.'s friend Will Sawyer who ends up getting killed in the Congo. And there's a subversion where Toby gets a press pass for a Russian journalist so she can cover a summit between their two governments, having assumed that the reason the Russians didn't want to let her in was that she was some kind of idealistic Voice of the Resistance. Turns out she was just a glorified gossip writer who had printed a lot of unchecked, fabricated or gratuitously nasty stories about them in a crappy tabloid. "They should give up your spot and put another naked woman in there!"
• Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager claimed to have edited the newspaper of Starfleet Academy as a student, breaking the story of the Maquis rebellion and getting the faculty and the student body polarized and taking sides. He reveals this information to Neelix, spurring him to investigate the ongoing espionage and sabotage situation aboard Voyager. Neelix, the ship's cook, is then inspired to use his television program A Briefing With Neelix to do some Real Journalism, and Neelix, and ultimately plays an important role in the unmasking of spy Michael Jonas. Ah, the power of the media.
• Jake Sisko becomes this, although his original ambition was to be a novelist, risking his life to cover the front lines of the Dominion War and to report from the occupied station.
• Word of God says that part of Stephen Colbert's persona on The Colbert Report is mistakenly thinking he's an intrepid reporter, and was inspired by TV journalists who act like they're breaking Watergate every time they do a "hard-hitting" exposé on playground violence or what have you. He specifically cited Geraldo Rivera as somebody who seems to believe "that he really is changing the world with every interview he does."
• The Shadow Line has Ross McGovern, a journalist that wants to write a story exposing police corruption and one of the show's few genuinely heroic characters.
• Shinji Kido from Kamen Rider Ryuki.
• Lois Lane and Clark Kent in Lois and Clark are this. More so than in other Superman incarnations much of the focus is on Lane and Kent developing their stories.

Radio and Audio Drama

• Frontier Gentleman featured J.B. Kendall, correspondent for the London Times, roaming The Wild West.
• Dan Holliday was an intrepid reporter for the Star-Times, before becoming an intrepid freelance writer in the Radio Drama Box 13.
• The Adventures of Superman paid only lip-service to Clark Kent's "mild-mannered" description—especially in the early years, when Superman operated mostly as an urban legend, and it was Clark Kent who investigated all the stories. When World War Two broke out, Clark even became an agent of the federal government on the side.
• Karla Kolumna from Benjamin Blümchen, a German Language audio drama series for kids.

Tabletop RPG

• Shadowrun. The reporters ("snoops") described in the Shadowbeat sourcebook. They have to worry about being harrassed, attacked or even killed by Mega Corps and various magical threats (spells, monsters etc.) they're reporting on.
• Dangerous Times: Muckrakers and Magic in old New York. "Players take the role of journalists who put their lives on the line to document corruption, disaster, and crime — in a 1920s New York that’s just discovered magic."

Theatre

• The members of the Tectonic Theater Project in The Laramie Project have a lot of this in them, and they also count as a Real Life example.

Toys

• Transformers has several journalist characters which feature in various stories, most prominently working for the Kent Brockman News Show Within a Show "Around Cybertron" which spans several different universes.

Video Games

• Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire has Gabby and Ty.
  • They are given a bigger supporting role in the manga.
• The main character of Beyond Good and Evil is a reporter working for an underground resistance movement, and her job is to sneak into government facilities and expose its complicity with the alien invaders.
• Spark Brushel in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.
  • Don't forget Lotta Hart from the Phoenix Wright set, though she's more of a amateur photographer than an Intrepid Reporter. She works for an occult magazine, later changing to celebrity photography after getting too scared.
  • A freelance vigilante example is the Yatagarasu from Ace Attorney Investigations, a master thief who specializes in stealing evidence of corrupt business dealings and sending them to the media rather than the police.
• Frank West of Dead Rising. He's covered wars, you know.
• Keats of Folklore definitely falls under this, considering how he's apparently okay with actually running around in the Netherworld and wailing on supernatural monsters just to get a good story for his magazine. Amusingly enough, Keats - an Agent Scully writing for an occult magazine - stubbornly refuses to believe that the Netherworld and his experiences there are actually real, but plays along and goes on asking questions and digging for clues in an effort to get to the truth (or, failing that, a good story).
• Ellet from Valkyria Chronicles takes it upon her to report everything that goes on during the Gallian War, especially if it means going to the front lines with Squad 7's leader, Welkin Gunther.
• Marcel from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is a journalist out for the next big scoop. In the end, he loses his job. After all, he's supposed to be a sportswriter, his desired subjects are decidedly tabloid fare (although existing), he makes Shanoa take all the photos, and even his surefire hit story about Shanoa's abilities is subject to a press ban. He never had a chance.
• In Deus Ex, tabloid journalist Joe Greene hounds JC Denton to get leads on UNATCO's activities. Eventually, you learn the truth: he was working for the Ancient Conspiracy all along, and even his nonsensical writings about alien plagues paving the way for invasion were just clever ways to discredit anyone who knows the truth about the Gray Death.
• In the adventure game The Dagger Of Amon Rah, you play as Laura Bow, the Intrepid Reporter who ends up solving a murder mystery, depending on which ending you get.
• Resident Evil has Ben from RE2 and Outbreak, and Alyssa Ashcroft, one of the main characters in Outbreak.
• Kylie Koopa, Ace reporter from Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time. She starts off somewhat annoying by messing with the shroobs and putting herself in danger to get her scoops, having to be rescued by the brothers at one point, but gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome later in the game by rescuing the Bros from the Princess Shroob and her minions in her own ship.
• Jake Quinlin in Ripper.!
• Peter Jacob from Eternal Darkness, tangled up in the business of an Eldritch Abomination because the church he picked to take cover while moving through France in WWI happened to be one of its bases. As if it weren't enough covering a war, y'know?
• Elena Fisher from Uncharted is more than willing to risk her life for a story. The second game essentially makes her into a full-fledged Action Girl who just happens to be a reporter.
  • In the first game, she Jumped At the Call. Sort of. She and her producers had already paid Nate for his little diving expedition, and they (and she) really wanted a story to go along with their investment. She gets dragged into the adventure when Nate takes her to the supposedly deserted island and their plane (their only way home, initially) gets shot down. The second game has her in full Intrepid Reporter mode, trying very hard to prove that Big Bad Zoran Lazarevic is still alive so that the United Nations or whoever will actually capture and try him for his numerous crimes.
• Aya Shameimaru. Actual canon description: "Aya wasn't covering events; Aya was creating the events themselves." Borders on Paparazzi in fanon.
• Mass Effect has minor character Emily Wong, whom you can help on a few occasions, as well as another, less friendly reporter whom you can punch in the ribs.
  • Emily Wong takes field reporting to the next level, when she livetweets the Reaper invasion. And dies a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Madison Paige, one of the protagonists of Heavy Rain. She seems to specialize in almost getting killed by creepy serial killers.
• Maya Amano of Persona 2 fame and her equally intrepid photographer Yukino Mayuzumi are very much made of this. It helps a lot to have a Persona and a full team of other Persona users on their side, though, when they confront madmen as the two Jokers, corrupt politicians, Thai mob bosses, and, oh, yes, the rampaging hordes of demons scouring Sumaru City and effing Nyarlathotep.
• Tae Asakura of Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army.
• Shoji from Devil Survivor. Very much so.
• Holly White in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Not that you'd know her if you hadn't played the game. She's only mentioned once after her appearance in Metal Gear 2, in the previous story section of Metal Gear Solid's manual.
• The Dig costars Maggie Robbins, a journalist who achieved worldwide fame through this style of reporting and uses it to wangle her way aboard the Space Shuttle on its mission to divert an asteroid from crashing into the Earth. She ends up getting whisked along for the ride when it turns out to be an alien spaceship.
• Eagle Eye Mysteries gives us Nancy Marx for the school paper in the first game, and Miranda Eagle and her fellow journalist Tungsten Wiles in the sequel.
• Double Switch: Alex is very much this. She ends up getting a story, and then some!

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive has Carol, big sister of Sarah. Her motto is "I grew up in Moperville. Weird stuff happens here". In the last appearance she has a blitz interview on "superhero sighting" opened with low-altitude drop from a helicopter. Merely to reach her witnesses quickly and have her team's copter free to chase "Cheerleadra" at the same time.
  • Earlier, Elliot's imaginary alter-ego "Super Elliot" has this as his day job.

Web Original

• In Code MENT, Camera 3 owns this trope.

Detard: Hey, where the hell is Camera 3?
Assistant: He said he was gonna get some "action shots".
[Cut to collapsing building]
Camera 3 Man:[falling to his death] THIS-IS-GONNA-BE-THE-BEST-SHOT-EVER!!

• Shin in Sailor Nothing, who idolises Hunter S. Thompson. She is obsessed with bringing out the Truth, and her name even means "truth" in Japanese.
• Patricia Neilson in Kate Modern. Unfortunately, the other characters see her as a nuisance and seldom help her investigation.
• Decades of Darkness has a whole family of them: Ulysses, Jesse and Diane Grant.
• In Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, two people, a photographer and a reporter (taking notes) stay while Dr. Horrible is shooting up the homeless shelter they are in. The reporter is in the front row and does not bat an eye when Dr. Horrible comes over to correct her spelling, only leaning to show him her notebook. He has not put the gun down.
• Cracked.com columnists frequently end up trying to get stories this way. Insane, blatantly untrue stories.
• Celeste McLachlan of the Slenderblog Make It Count. Bad journalistic choices are a little bit justified in that she's still very young.
• Solomon Todd (known as Duke to his colleagues) was this before he joined the FBI. It makes him really, really good at following paper trails, and getting stories out of traumatised witnesses. It's probably not where he learnt the skills that make him the team's executioner, though.

Western Animation

• Gargoyles had Travis Marshall, in both cartoon and comic continuities.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man has the Daily Bugle's Ned Lee, who's investigating the secret identities of Spider-Man and the Green Goblin.
  • His comic book counterpart, Ned Leeds, started out as a somewhat antagonistic Intrepid Reporter, then was revealed to be the Hobgoblin, then was killed, then was revealed not to be the Hobgoblin after all...
• April O'Neil was turned into one of these for the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 cartoon. The change remained for the Archie adaptation of the cartoon, and, to a lesser extent, the movies.
• The Quack Pack version of Daisy Duck was a globe-trotting reporter for the TV series What in the World?.
• In Swat Kats, "Kat's Eye News" reporter Ann Gora sometimes got herself and her camera crew in danger while following the Swat Kats' adventures.
• In the Captain Caveman shorts on The Flintstone Comedy Show, Betty and Wilma were reporters for "The Daily Granite" who'd wind up accompanying Captain Caveman on his adventures.
• Danny Phantom played with this for one episode with topnotch reporter Harriet Chin. When she finds ghost to be true, she enthusiastically scoops up the story and sends it to the paper she works on. She's promptly fired. In a later episode, she got a job as a news lady—though by that point ghosts have become public awareness.
• Liberty's Kids features two of these as main characters - 14-year-old James and 15-year-old Sarah.
• Summer Gleason in Batman: The Animated Series sometimes takes on this role. Lois Lane in the spinoff Superman animated series is the more traditional example.
• Miraculous Ladybug; in the episode "The Pharaoh", Alya is so obsessed with her live blog of Ladybug's heroics, she even continues it while being kidnapped by the villain; luckily for her, he gladly answers her interview questions... Which last until she discovers he intends to offer her to the Sun God.
• This Trope is exaggerated with Shandra Jimenez in Gravity Falls during the three-part Grand Finale, who seems more concerned with reporting the ongoing crisis than she does about her life. Despite being obviously wounded and disheveled, she somehow manages to get into the Fearamid and provide coverage of Bill's horrific actions, her broadcast only stopping when the Eye-Bats actually find her. Possibly could count as a Heroic Sacrifice, if one assumes she's doing it as a plea for someone to gain the courage to fight Bill. (And it works.)

Real Life

• Quite a few Real Life reporters have fitted this mold for at least some of their careers. Nellie Bly, for example. And Woodward & Bernstein would hardly have gotten their stories on Watergate if they hadn't been a bit intrepid.
• The late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (AKA Raoul Duke), founder of a branch of journalism called "Gonzo" (no, not THAT Gonzo (or that OTHER GONZO)), who not only went out to find the stories, he fucking MADE them, and included himself, the line between journalism and fiction was delightfully and psychedelically blended. Played particularly straight when he was sent to cover a motorcycle race and a police convention, and ended up with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
  • His Crowning Moment of Awesome for this trope came earlier—he rode with the Hell's Angels for several months, got stomped by them after it became clear he wasn't a pet publicist who would lead them to a lot of money, and, despite his famous temper, still wrote a fair and compassionate, though not blindly sympathetic, account of his time with them.
  • Another moment was his (satirical) claim that, judging from appearances, Edmund Muskie was on the South American hallucinogenic Ibogaine during the '72 election campaign. It got picked up and reported as real news, apparently by news organizations who hadn't gotten the word about Hunter yet... This actually caused some problems for Muskie, or at least an uncomfortable question or two from the press.
• In Australia, two rival "current-affairs" shows, Today Tonight and A Current Affair practice "foot-in-the-door" investigative "journalism". The war between TT and ACA can get quite nasty.
  • Though the actual quality of the stories on both shows is up for debate.

"These shows prey on the sensationalism that stupid people lap up, with stories of supermarkets conspiring to jack up their prices, of dodgy car parks where your car will be sold into white slavery and which celebrity diet is really the most effective."

—Critical Dave: "Today Tonight: Where principles don't matter and pandering to the idiot masses is order of the day"

• "Doctor Livingston, I presume?"
• The entire notion of intrepid vs. ethics has become hotly contested within the journalistic field, as noted by this article from an old episode of Frontline
• Old Time examples of Intrepid Reporters are arguably more interesting from the dramatic point of view. They could actually write reports that had good story quality. Besides Stanley (mentioned above) there are the great War Correspondants and Foreign Correspondants like Ernie Pyle, Alan Moorehead, Lowell Thomas and Sulzberger. There is also James/Jan Morris who did the dispatches from the Everest climb. These types make great characters for a Jungle Opera. Michael Yon today seems like a throwback to that type. Maybe he was Born in the Wrong Century.
• Herb Morrison of WLS, who recorded the iconic reportage of the Hindenburg disaster, is arguably an example of this.
• Herodotus, while called the "father of history" sometimes seems rather like an Intrepid Reporter as well.
• Greg Palast, investigative reporter for BBC Newsnight and author.
• Egon Erwin Kisch, whom you may call a Real Life Trickster Archetype. As he said about himself: "I'm a German. I'm a Czech. I'm a Jew. I'm a Communist. I'm from a good family. I'm a student corps member. One of those always helps me out."
  • He was actually called "Der rasende Reporter" ("The Furious Reporter").
• At no point in his long career was (now-retired) war correspondent Joe Galloway ever shy about rushing headlong into danger for the sake of a story. Most famous was his conduct at the Battle of Ia Drang during the Vietnam War, which was dramatized in the film We Were Soldiers (see above). He voluntarily accompanied U.S. Air Cavalry soldiers into a highly active combat zone where they were cut off from ground reinforcements, getting so close to the fighting that at one point it became necessary for him to keep an M-16 on his lap for self-defense, and taking considerable time out from his photography in order to drag wounded men to safety. Some of his photographs of the fighting became the first images many Americans had ever seen of the war in Vietnam. Later in life, his affinity for soldiers led him to become ferociously critical of shortsighted politicians who sacrificed soldiers' lives for what he believed were frivolous and idiotic reasons.
• Claire Booth Luce was a politician and a columnist and a friend of William F. Buckley Jr. As well as a wife of a newspaper baron. And a Lady of Adventure.