Despite the threats posed by misinformation and limited funding, grassroots efforts to build skills and literacy in data journalism and data visualization are bearing fruit in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines — a trend sparked partly by a hunger for information around COVID-19.
Malaysiakini gained a global reputation by remaining independent while publishing in a restrictive media atmosphere. After 22 years at the helm, co-founder Premesh Chandran speaks about creating a quadrilingual website that receives millions of unique pageviews a day, and about helping to change the media conversation in Malaysia.
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the world in English, we found a helpful database that’s tracking government responses to COVID-19 with the help of 400 researchers, a multimedia project on how eight journalists from around the world are coping with reporting during the pandemic, and a piece on how autocrats are cracking down on independent news sites.
GIJN regrets to announce that it is canceling this year’s Asian Investigative Journalism Conference, which was slated for October 16-18 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Given the unpredictability of the coronavirus and its potential impact on attendees, GIJN asked for assurances that the conference could be canceled if necessary. The hotel refused and insisted that GIJN provide a 100% guarantee of all conference costs. Instead, GIJN will begin work on next year’s Global Conference and a host of new projects, and promises to return to Asia in 2022.
With the opposition in power for the first time since independence in Malaysia, one of the oldest and most influential digital news sites in Asia, Malaysiakini, which was set up in 1999 to show people what the state-controlled media wouldn’t, is looking to the future.
It’s been a busy first quarter of 2017 for GIJN members — from picking up Pulitzer Prizes to launching crowdfunding campaigns. There have also been new projects and new collaborations forged. Here are some noteworthy splashes made by GIJN members around the world.
Newsrooms in Asia have traditionally worked alone, guarding their sources and tip-offs fiercely and keeping their stories and investigations in-house. However, after attending GIJN’s Asian Investigative Journalism Conferences and participating in the global Panama Papers investigation, Indonesia’s top newsweekly and leading investigative outlet Tempo have been inspired to pursue their own cross-border collaborations.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is delighted to welcome to 10 new member organizations. We are particularly pleased to welcome for the first time groups from Ghana, Venezuela, Malaysia, Liberia, and New Zealand. Among the new members are award-winning reporting centers in Serbia and South Africa, online publishers in Malaysia and Venezuela, an African cross-border reporting network, and training groups based in Liberia, Germany, Mexico, and the Netherlands.
This is not just about getting the money; it is about creating a faithful community of readers. In a way, they are searching for the lost group of loyal subscribers to traditional newspapers who would call the newsroom in times of crisis as if journalists were family.
