Reporting Tools & Tips
How to Cover Academic Research Fraud and Errors
Tips from three experts who have covered research misconduct or have hands-on experience monitoring or detecting it.
Methodology
8 Ways Journalists Can Access Academic Research for Free
A lot of academic research exists behind paywalls. The Journalist’s Resource outlines eight ways reporters can get free access to high-quality scholarship.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
5 Tips for Using Academic Research in Investigative Journalism
Academic research is a crucial tool for investigating societal problems and holding the powerful accountable. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Neil Bedi, criminologist Rachel Lovell, and Denise-Marie Ordway of The Journalist’s Resource share practical advice on using academic research in investigative journalism.
News & Analysis
Why Investigative Journalists Should Report on Lax Oversight and Fraud in Research Data
Uri Simonsohn, a behavioral scientist who coauthors the Data Colada blog, urges reporters to ask researchers about preregistration and expose opportunities for academic fraud.
Guide Resource
Researching Corporations and Their Owners
This resource was last updated in 2023 by GIJN’s Toby McIntosh and Emily O’Sullivan. Investigative journalists play a crucial role in holding corporations to account, and have revealed labor abuses, environmental violations, corporate impunity and other instances of malpractice through deep-dives into companies and their owners. However, government records on corporations often reveal only the […]
Resource Tipsheet
Tipsheet for Investigative Journalists on War Crimes and Open Source Research
Open source information can be a valuable method of reporting when investigating violations of international humanitarian law or war crimes.
Resource
Reporter’s Guide to Investigating War Crimes: Open Source Research
In this first installment of GIJN’s investigating war crimes guide, experts discuss how open source research can cover armed conflict.
Case Studies
How a Canadian Reporting Lab Is Pioneering Academic-Journalist Collaboration
Fundamentally, journalists and scholars do similar work – diving into documents, crunching numbers, conducting interviews. But their timeframes, and their measures of success, can be quite different. The Global Reporting Centre tries to bridge that gap, both by funding such collaborations and serving as an ambassador between two very different cultures.
News & Analysis
What We’re Reading: Facebook’s Original Reporting Algorithm, Academic and Journalism Collaborations, and the Race Problem in Europe’s Newsrooms
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the online world in English, includes a recent algorithm change on Facebook’s News Feed that will boost original news stories, lessons learned on an academic and investigative journalism collaboration, and European media’s race problem.
Global Conference: Call for Research Papers/Abstracts
The 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference, scheduled for this September 26-29 in Hamburg, Germany, will feature an academic research track. Journalism professors and researchers worldwide are invited to submit research paper abstracts highlighting trends, challenges, teaching methodologies, new developments and best practices in investigative and data journalism. Abstracts are due April 8, 2019.
Case Studies
New Models: How Academics, Nonprofit News and Government are Collaborating
The Global Reporting Centre has launched an ambitious project investigating labor abuse, environmental impact and corruption in global commerce. Here’s the Centre’s Peter W Klein on how Hidden Costs will bring together award-winning journalists, scholars and major media organizations — including the New York Times, PBS Frontline, the Toronto Star, Smithsonian Channel, NBC News, DigitalGlobe and Google News Labs — to undertake investigative-reporting projects.
Meet the Watchdog Scientists Battling Dubious Scientific Research
Fraudulent, plagiarized or otherwise shoddy research is an increasing problem across all scientific disciplines — particularly in China — and can catch like wildfire. Australian Professor Jennifer Byrne and her French colleague Cyril Labbé, as well as projects like Retraction Watch, are fighting back.
Resource Tipsheet
Online Research Tools
Online Research Tools and Investigative Techniques by the BBC’s ace online sleuth Paul Myers has long been a starting point for online research by GIJN readers. His website, Research Clinic, is rich in research links and “study materials.” Here’s a tipsheet about finding people online that Myers presented at a 2019 GIJN webinar. And a […]
Global Conference: Call for Research Papers/Abstracts (Closed)
The 10th Global Investigative Journalism Conference, to be held this November 16-19 in Johannesburg, South Africa, will again feature an academic research track, highlighting trends, challenges, teaching methodologies, and best practices in investigative journalism. Here is the call for papers that is going out to journalism professors worldwide.
Data Journalism Reporting Tools & Tips
Research Desk: Eurostat, Data Repositories, New Reports
Global Conference: Call for Research Papers / Abstracts
The ninth Global Investigative Journalism Conference, to be held this October 8-11 in Lillehammer, Norway will feature again an academic research track, highlighting trends, challenges, teaching methodologies, and best practices in investigative journalism. Here is the call for papers that is going out to journalism professors worldwide.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips Teaching & Training
Online Research Tools and Investigative Techniques
Search engines are an intrinsic part of the array of commonly used “open source” research tools. Together with social media, domain name look-ups and more traditional solutions such as newspapers, effective web searching will help you find vital information. Many people find that search engines often bring up disappointing results from dubious sources. A few tricks, however, can ensure that you corner the pages you are looking for, from sites you can trust. The same goes for searching social networks and other sources to locate people.
The Research Desk: Tips on Digging into Scholarly Research Journals
Some think of scholarly or academic journals and the articles they contain as boring, not easy to read, and not useful if you’re not an academic. While this might be the case for some articles, the belief that this is the case for all articles in all publications is wrong. Academic and scholarly publications can be of tremendous value to the journalist and researcher.
Resource
The Research Desk: UNESCO, SIPRI, and Searching iTunes
The Research Desk is back with another selection of web resources and reports of interest to journalists around the world. This round-up includes a Transparency Portal on UNESCO’s global projects, fact sheets from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and published reports from the U.S. Congressional Research Service and the UK’s House of Commons Library.
Resource
The Research Desk: Tips and Tools
The Research Desk with Gary Price is back, with its second installment, featuring a roundup of new tools — the WHO’s MiNDBANK database, with documents from 170 countries; ePSIplatform, on open data in the EU & worldwide; new UN report on wastewater; NATO archives expand; and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.
Research
Global Conference: Call for Research Papers
The eighth Global Investigative Journalism Conference, to be held this October 12-15 in Rio de Janeiro, will feature for the first time an academic research track, highlighting trends, challenges, teaching methodologies, and best practices in investigative journalism.
Climate News & Analysis
Investigation Reveals Global Fisheries Are Worse Off — and Many Have Already Collapsed
In this story, an academic researcher recounts his team’s investigation, published in the journal Science, that looked into the accuracy of models measuring the health of fisheries.
Reporting Tools & Tips
The New Journalist: 13 Media Sites to Keep You in the Know
There is a growing number of media and journalism schools and research centers investigating new trends, helping to understand digital disruption and its impact. With their newsletters, websites and interactive online training, they can inform you about inspiring innovations, share academic research, spot threats, provoke critical thinking, highlight valuable journalistic endeavors and report on moves in the industry that will affect how stories reach people. Here are 13 you don’t want to miss.
Guide Resource
The Oceans Investigations Guide
This encyclopedia from The Outlaw Ocean Project offers pointers for investigating ocean crimes and concerns.
Inside GIJN News & Analysis
2024 Candidates for GIJN’s Board of Directors
This October and November, GIJN member representatives will vote to elect three regional representatives and four at-large directors for the 15-person Board of Directors.
News & Analysis
From Mexico to South Africa, Brazil to the Philippines: GIJN’s Investigative Bookshelf
Featuring titles that address historic wrongdoing, unpack corporate secrets, and reveal misconduct that the powerful would rather remain hidden.
LATAM Focus Member Profiles News & Analysis
The Power of Collaboration: El CLIP and the Plan to Transform Latin America’s Investigative Ecosystem
CLIP was founded by three leading journalists who shared the conviction that to mirror the transnational challenges journalists face in Latin America, the stories had to be cross-border too.
Case Studies News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Goldsmith Prize Finalist: How One Collaboration Revealed Alleged Sex Abuse, Torture by Sheriff’s Deputies
Four reporters share how they investigated extreme abuses of power at Mississippi sheriff’s offices and offer tips to help other journalists do similar work.