By Tom M. Jennings

Having received the assignment to produce the first episode of EXPOSÉ {"Crisis Mismanagement" premiered as the first episode of the series in 2006}, I was in the plum position of not having to cater to a series format. The one thing requested of me, though, was to find and present the classic investigative editor, like Jason Robards playing Ben Bradlee in the film All the President's Men -- towering, intimidating, irascible, loves to tell war stories over a glass of bourbon.

Enter South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigations editor Joe Demma: diminutive, sweet, a guy who wears Hawaiian shirts and doesn't touch alcohol. He's cute, not scary. He rides a scooter to work every day, for God's sake, a fact he didn't want anyone to know (and certainly wouldn't let me film). Worst, he was just a week into the job at the newspaper when this story -- a 70-article series of reports on Michael Brown and the Federal Emergency Management Agency starting a year before Katrina -- began. The real heroes of this were the three reporters who did all the legwork -- Sally Kestin, John Maines and Megan O'Matz: tough, dogged, insightful.

I quickly dismissed Joe as a main character in my film. What I focused on was the team, for this truly was a story of a group effort. This is what I wanted to get across, each reporter getting a vignette about his or her contribution to the reporting. The other theme that rose prominently was their collective refusal to kowtow to the official line -- that there was no problem at FEMA, that if the agency's head Michael Brown said there was no waste, fraud and abuse all was fine. During a time when reporters from the biggest news outlets were repeating official lines on all manner of issues, these guys would take nothing at face value.

And then there was Joe. What to do with Joe? No Jason Robards here. But one day while sitting in his office trading stories from the field with him it hit me like a category-five hurricane. As a filmmaker -- as a storyteller -- I find that my preconceived notions always give way to reality, and the reality of Joe was that he was the real McCoy: a three-time Pulitzer winner; a grand storyteller in his own right; elfin, yes, but someone who'd taken down mob bosses and drug cartels. His lesson to me: take the reality and play it for everything it is. He became the spine of the show, the guy whose presence exudes worldliness and a lifetime of knowledge -- about reporting, about people and about life. He'd arrived in Ft. Lauderdale after a career in newspapers around the country thinking he'd slowly move into retirement. Instead he shepherded a great story into being nominated for another Pulitzer.

"I wanted to work with people who kick butt and take names," he said, characteristically giving credit to John, Megan and Sally. But he is a binding glue, a guy who would never take no for an answer. Maybe that's why, after weeks of my hounding him, he finally relented and let me get that scooter shot -- he wouldn't ever give up on a quest.

TOM JENNINGS is a New York-based independent documentary producer who has made films for PBS, HBO, National Geographic and the History Channel. He has won an Emmy Award, the DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, and the Edward R. Murrow Award. He recently won a Writers Guild of America award for the EXPOSÉ episode "Crisis Mismanagement." Jennings is currently a Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellow.