Investigative journalism in this wired world is vastly different from what it used to be. Cobrapost editor Aniruddha Bahal writes about how journalism has changed over time, from postcard complaints to internet trolling, meeting sources in parking lots and using apps and being highly competitive versus collaborative.
Robyn Vinter, founder of a UK-based investigative news website for working-class millennials and people outside the “London bubble,” says she made a conscious choice not to try and make a “big profit” from it. “We’re not trying to be millionaires,” says Vinter.“We’re trying to do investigative journalism, and you can’t really do both, I don’t think.”
GIJN has launched its latest regional language edition, GIJN in Bangla, in partnership with Bangladesh-based member, the Management and Resources Development Initiative. Each day, we’ll be sharing the best investigative tips and tools, groundbreaking stories, grants and fellowships, data sets and more.
Earlier this year, Botswana’s INK Centre for Investigative Journalism tracked down a dossier which detailed the heinous crimes of Gukurahundi — a series of massacres of civilians carried out by the Zimbabwe National Army in the 1980s — which had been kept under lock and key for decades. It was the first time the names of the deceased and blow-by-blow accounts of how the executions were carried out were made available to the public. INK’s Ntibinyane Ntibinyane writes for GIJN on how they did it.
When Clare Rewcastle Brown founded the Sarawak Report in 2010, it was designed to highlight issues affecting indigenous communities in Malaysia, but it soon became instrumental in breaking what the US attorney-general has described as the worst form of kleptocracy in history — the 1MDB scandal involving the plundering of state funds allegedly by Malaysia’s then prime minister and his associates.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 19 to 25 finds society’s most urgent concerns in the textual data of a long-standing @dearabby column, a kerfuffle over @The Economist’s regional inequality graph, dangerous pit toilets in Africa highlighted by @SECTION27news and a gift of sorts from @politico, who open sourced their elections data management system.
Non-partisan advocacy organization Issue One spent a year combing through thousands of financial filings over a six-year period to figure out where the money for campaign advertisements in the USA was coming from and who it was going to. They ultimately compiled a database that outlined the top 15 “dark money groups” — organizations that receive millions of dollars of donations from companies and businesses to fund campaign ads.
Breaking the Cambridge Analytica scandal has reinvigorated features journalist Carole Cadwalladr’s belief in journalism and how important it is. She talks with Jacob Phillips about Facebook, social media and the future of investigative journalism.
As collaborative journalism becomes a common practice across the media industry, news outlets may need clear documentation to guide their projects. Drafting a memorandum of understanding between collaborating partners can help get everyone on the same page. Stefanie Murray, from the Center for Cooperative Media, gathered six MOU template examples as a guide.
