The concept of explanatory journalism attempts to answer more —

Concept: Reporting is conventionally organised around the interrogatives Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. Straight news reporting exists to settle the identifying questions — who was involved, what happened, when and where. Explanatory journalism is defined as the form that goes past those identifiers to supply context, background and causation, so that an audience which already knows what happened also understands what produced it and what it means.

Application: The stem asks which questions this form attempts to answer more. The identifying questions are already the ordinary business of a news report, so the additional work explanatory journalism takes on is causal: it lays out the reasons, conditions and mechanisms behind an event. That is exactly the 'Why' question, and 'Why' questions is therefore what explanatory journalism attempts to answer more.

Contrast: The other interrogatives offered belong to the identifying layer that ordinary reporting already covers, or to no reporting layer at all:

• 'Where' fixes the location or setting of an event — a factual identifier that a routine news lead already carries.

• 'Who' fixes the persons or institutions involved — again an identifier supplied by ordinary reporting.

• 'Which' asks that one item be picked out of a stated set, and is not one of the standard reporting interrogatives.

Cross-check: The practical test is what a reader still wants after a straight news bulletin. The bulletin has already given the actors, the place and the event; the demand that explainer desks, backgrounders and 'why this matters' pieces were created to meet is the reason behind the news. This confirms that the concept of explanatory journalism is oriented above all to 'Why' questions.