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News & Analysis
Hate in Myanmar, Murder in Manila and More Award-Winning Investigations from Asia
The winners of the 2019 SOPA Awards were recently announced at a gala held by the Society of Publishers in Asia. Here’s a look at six of the inspiring investigations that were rewarded.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Tracking Illegal Funding Campaigns via Cryptocurrency
How do you track cryptocurrency transactions? Brenna Smith, an undergraduate researcher at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Investigations Lab, who specializes in investigating disinformation and the illicit use of cryptocurrencies, has created a tutorial using Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades’ bitcoin funding campaign as a case study to show you how.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Game of Thrones Deaths, Visualizing Rich Hungarians, European Parliament
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 20 to 26 finds @PostGraphics’ meticulous cataloguing of all on-screen deaths in Game of Thrones, @datajournalism’s tips on covering the crime beat, @DIEZEIT’s analysis of a politically diverse European parliament, and a quick beginner’s guide to learning data visualization by @AlliTorban.
Case Studies
Investigative Journalism in the V4: How Polish, Hungarian, Slovak and Czech Reporters Work Together
Vsquare publishes longform investigative journalism stories in English on Central Eastern Europe, focusing on the Visegrád region that includes Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Case Studies
How They Did It: Exposing Police Violence Against the Yellow Vests
For several weeks after the Yellow Vest protest movement took off in France, most major media outlets failed to report on the violent police repression of protesters. This troubling silence was shattered by the work of David Dufresne, an independent journalist who has become the main chronicler of police violence against Yellow Vests through his ongoing project “Allô Place Beauvau.” He explains how it all started with a tweet.
Case Studies
When a Picture Tells the Story: 9 Investigations That Used Satellite Imagery
Satellite imagery has become an indispensable tool in investigative journalism for fact-finding, gauging the impact of a particular situation and figuring out the exact details. Here’s a round-up of of some major stories which satellite imagery helped uncover.
News & Analysis
Your Weekend Documentary Viewing: Finalists for the 2019 DIG Awards
The fifth edition of DIG Festival, the annual international conference that celebrates and awards the best investigative documentaries in the world, is fast approaching. The jury, chaired this year by Naomi Klein, will pick and announce the winners in Riccione, Italy during the festival, from May 30 to June 2.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Moscow Garbage, Mexican Homicide, EU Ideologies
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 13 to 19 finds a preview snippet on sensible charts from @albertocairo’s upcoming book “How Charts Lie,” @ladatamx’s report on homicides in Mexico, @RepublikMagazin’s analysis on the changing ideologies of political parties in the European Union, and a recap of the Data Journalism UK conference by @paulbradshaw.
Case Studies
How They Did It: Reporting a UN Murder Cover-Up in the DRC
On November 27, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Central European Time, five separate media organizations broke similar stories on a United Nations cover-up of the murders of their own staff. It took nothing less than the “radical sharing” of information between these rival platforms to expose a global conspiracy of silence.
Data Journalism
Eight Simple Ways to Let the Spreadsheet Do the Math So You Can Focus on the Story
With just a spreadsheet, a journalist can let the software do the counting and calculating, allowing them to concentrate on the purpose and result of their inquiry. It also opens the door to understanding more advanced statistics, and the use or misuse of statistics by governments and businesses.
Case Studies
How They Did It: Investigating Trafficked Guatemalan Teens in the US
The documentary “Trafficked in America” investigates a labor trafficking scheme targeting Guatemalan teenagers who were smuggled into the United States and forced to work long hours at an egg farm to pay off their smuggling debts. In an interview with Journalist’s Resource, the film’s authors offer insights into the investigative reporting process and the importance of cultural competency in doing high-quality journalism.
Data Journalism
Struck by Lightning: A Quick Lesson on Cleaning up Your Data
Being struck by lightning is often used as an example of heavenly retribution because it is so unlikely. Fatalities due to lightning are statistical outliers, since most people struck by lightning survive. So what is the best way to avoid becoming one of these outliers? The following is a step-by-step set of instructions for unpacking a dataset – and being careful about the conclusions we draw.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Weak Passwords, Wolf Drama, Chart Chooser, London vs. England
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 6 to 12 finds @SteveFranconeri’s chart chooser based on data formats instead of visualization functions, @daswasfehlt’s examination of Austrian politicians’ weak email passwords in the wake of a major data leak, @NZZ’s look at whether wolves are really a nuisance in Switzerland and @wihbey’s research into the data competence and partisanship of journalists.
Case Studies
A Red Camaro, an Orange Garbage Can and White Magnolias: Crowdsourcing a Convict on Instagram
A fugitive convict from the Netherlands has taunted Dutch police with provocative pictures and videos from Iran, playing a game of “catch me if you can” on Instagram. Investigative reporters from Bellingcat were able to reveal the last known location of the criminal with the help of over 60 Twitter users. Here’s how they did that.
Case Studies
How They Did It: Making a Story Too Big to Ignore by Using Surveys
Reporters at a regional newspaper in Bangladesh, Gramer Kagoj, heard from local villagers that a maternity allowance scheme for poor mothers was being abused by women who weren’t pregnant. With guidance from an expert, they applied statistical survey methods to interview 400 beneficiaries, and their investigation took a different turn — revealing a deeper, systemic problem.
Case Studies
CrowdNewsroom: Using Communities to Assemble Non-Public Data Sets
The German nonprofit news site Correctiv wanted to cover important issues — such as property ownership in German cities — that didn’t have accessible public data. So it created CrowdNewsroom, a platform that enables it to empower readers to contribute to investigations.
News & Analysis
The Death and Rebirth of Objectivity
If current trends continue, the old debate about whether journalists can ever be truly objective may fade away, say Mark Lee Hunter and Luk N. Van Wassenhove. Objectivity, they argue, is morphing into a radically new form.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Populism Popularity, DataViz Pedagogy, National vs. Local Media, German Migration
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 29 to May 5 finds @zeitonline mapping German migration post-reunification, @FILWD pointing out the gaps in current data visualization teaching syllabi, @AlJazeera launching its data journalism introductory guide, and @WSJ highlighting the stark divide between national and local media in the United States.
A GIJN Webinar with Paul Myers: An Investigative Approach to Online Research
Don’t miss GIJN’s first webinar with BBC’s top online sleuth Paul Myers on May 22 at 10am EST. Myers, a favourite at GIJN’s conferences and an expert in online investigative research, will spend an hour sharing effective techniques in using Google and social media for digging up information on people of interest. And you’ll have a chance to ask him questions. Sign up now!
Data Journalism
Six Case Studies in Computational Journalism
How often is social media used as a source in news stories? Can a decision tree algorithm generate tens of thousands of 250-word stories? And what is belief-driven data journalism? These questions were at the heart of some of the promising projects featured at the 2019 Computation + Journalism Symposium.
Reporting Tools & Tips
10 Tips on Investigating Extrajudicial Killings: A Case Study from the Philippines
Reporting on extrajudicial killings — murders carried out by state actors or by non-state vigilantes with the cover of state sanction — poses specific challenges to investigative journalists. Here are tips from two extraordinary reporters working in the Philippines: Rappler’s Patricia Evangelista and Reuters’ Clare Baldwin.
Reporting Tools & Tips
The Perugia Principles: 12 Ways Journalists Should Protect Their Sources
In the public imagination, reporters working with whistleblowers has traditionally meant All the President’s Men-style cloak-and-dagger stealth — meetings in shadowy underground garages, potted plants turned into signals, Hal Holbrook’s whispered exhortations to “follow the money.” But today, journalists’ interactions with whistleblowers are more likely to come in Signal chats or secure drop boxes than Washington, DC garages. And that shift has changed the terms of engagement in often confusing ways.
News & Analysis
Why Foreign Funding of Philippines Media Isn’t the Problem
Once one of Asia’s freest media, the Philippines’ independent news outlets are under sustained attack by President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies, ranging from legal and political assaults to harassment by armies of online trolls. Pro-Duterte columnists are now attacking the modest funding that the country’s media nonprofits receive from overseas, claiming, without evidence, that they are part of a foreign plot to oust Duterte. In this powerful rebuttal, Sheila Coronel, a co-founder of the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism, takes on the lies and misinformation behind the campaign.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: History of Infographics, Colorism in Fashion, Weather Trends
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 22 to 28 finds an interesting breakdown of colorism in fashion by @puddingviz, a series of gorgeous maps on natural disasters and extreme weather trends in the United States by @PostGraphics, a preview of a book on the history of infographics by @srendgen, and @UpshotNYT’s recap of its best articles from the past five years.
Case Studies
Making and Breaking: A World Tour of Innovation and News Labs
There are no chemical formulas, no “Breaking Bad” hazmat suits, no gadgets to measure humidity and atmospheric pressure. Juan Ignacio Sixto takes us on a world tour of News Labs, spaces that are meant to foster innovation within newsrooms.