Ellen Weiss is a celebrated journalist and three time Peabody Award winner. After joining NPR in 1982, she went on to run the NPR news desk and eventually became the Vice President for news in 2007. Ellen is now the Executive Editor for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, non-partisan investigative news agency that that seeks to highlight significant public issues and to make institutional power more transparent and accountable.

Can you tell us a little about your current work at the Center for Public Integrity?

As the Executive Editor, I oversee all of the domestic journalism produced by the center. (There is an international consortium of investigative journalists also based at the center, but overseen by another person.) Currently, we are doing something very familiar to many newsrooms–trying to establish the right balance between the Center’s work and voice in the daily news and information cycle online, and its mid and long-form investigative work.

Leveraging of all of the technology of the new news ecosystem, CPI has the biggest opportunity in its 20-year history to develop and disseminate its journalism. At its core, the Center is about producing in-depth, unbiased and original investigative reporting that not only highlights systemic failures and sheds light on abuses of power in the public and private sector, but also empowers people to hold institutions and individuals accountable, which can lead to changes for the better. As the 2012 election approaches, a great deal of our work will focus on tracking the fl ow of money into political campaigns and providing as much detail identifying the sources of money − both by individuals and groups.

What was the lesson from the Juan Williams scandal? What would you have done diff erently if anything at all?

NPR has already discussed publicly how it would have handled its decision to terminate Juan William’s contract diff erently. I’ll leave it at that. In my almost 29 years at NPR, I learned something valuable every day.

What is the average American citizen to do when faced with such massive abuses of power at the highest levels of business and government? Who should people turn to?

We are lucky to live at a time when there is more information than ever available to the public. But sorting through that information, organizing it and making sense of it is time consuming and challenging. So fi rst you need to fi nd institutions and individuals − such as CPI − that you trust to interrogate the data and the information put out there, to determine whether the promises made have been upheld or broken, whether the statements being made are true and whether the whole story is being told. Empowered with that information, citizens can and should hold public and private individuals and institutions accountable.

People should fi nd sources of information − translators and guides, if you will − who they can trust to give them the straight story. Th e explosion of information available means that people can and should consume their news and information from multiple sources. And I think it is particularly important to seek out perspectives that may challenge your opinions. It’s easy to live in an echo chamber and have your every belief played back to you over and over again. But I think that narrow casting is one of the greatest dangers to our democracy.

Where do you see political landscape in the next ten years? Will this gridlock pass, or are we seeing a permanent metamorphosis of business as usual in DC?

I never make predictions – that’s how journalists get into trouble.

With the Occupy Wall Street protests in full swing not only in NY, but across the globe, do you suspect that there will be big banking reforms on the horizon, or will this fi zzle out and be forgotten?

Again, I don’t make predictions. I think it is extremely important to look at the existing banking reform legislation and ask if it is eff ective and, if not, why not?

From where do you draw your inspiration?

So many sources – but these days, I am most inspired by my children, two boys who are 18 and 21. Th ey represent the future and they have always grounded me in what ultimately matters most.