Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://gijn.org/category/development-2/)
Syria is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. But that didn’t stop three Syrian reporters from launching the first investigative journalism organization in the country. They’ve produced a number of investigative stories in exile in cooperation with those still on the ground in Syria, but had to kill many more due to the high potential risks. Moving ahead, sustainability and sufficient funding are crucial to the organization.
As GIJN has grown to 145-strong member organizations, we’re finding a wealth of unique methods they’re using to increase revenue, expand outreach, and support investigative work. Here are a few out-of-the-box ideas and programs implemented by GIJN members that are worth a second look.
The post-election Presidential transition in the United States has raised many questions and concerns among the international development community about the future direction of funding for and engagement with overseas media and democracy assistance. Here, three experts offer their views about the potential for major cuts in funding and politicization of international media support.
Investigative reporting has never been a profitable business, especially when it relies on the support of governments or non-profit foundations. But now the funds are dwindling and costs are on the rise. Donors have new priorities, not least a global and intensifying refugee crisis and de-radicalization. However, Arab journalists fought to initiate free speech and honest reporting in the Arab region and continue to fight to maintain them, with no intention of giving up now.
Independent news organizations in Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea are experiencing both direct and indirect challenges in cyberspace, from content blocking to censorship and self-censorship. Edgardo Legaspi, executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, says threatened governments are “playing catch-up” after recognizing that the Internet can be an effective tool for voices to be heard.
In everyday journalism, to get the public to pay attention to your story, to make it not only truthful, but also credible and attractive, is a hard task. And it has become even harder in the digital era. Information flows constantly through our portable electronic devices, like a river of muddy waters, dragging the authentic pieces of story-telling together with the fake; the verified; and the gossip. So if journalists want to have any chance at succeeding in this battle, they must not only find good stories, but must also elevate their story-telling to an art.
It was 6 March 1971 when the first edition of the Tempo was published. This year marks their forty-fifth anniversary and over that time the Indonesian weekly magazine has gone through a lot, including a temporary closure under the Soeharto regime. In this interview, Wahyu Dhyatmika, investigative journalist at Tempo, talks about the evolution of the magazine and how they are trying to adapt to the digital age, considering the development of news apps and the creation of specific mobile content.
From a media outlet that pays citizens to report from remote areas of Kenya to a portal that uses humor as its main strategy to inform Russians, journalism faces different challenges in different cultural and social contexts. Creativity, however, seems to be a common skill that media entrepreneurs shared in addressing their problems at the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) on Saturday, April 16.
It’s not unusual for investigative reporting to lead to huge fines. Exposés of foreign bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion have led to billions of dollars recovered by governments worldwide. What is shocking about these numbers is how they compare to the paucity of foreign aid to investigative journalists where it is most needed — in developing and transitioning countries.
There are things that happen with such regularity and predictability that journalists have simply ceased to recognize their news value – not least if those things are least likely to happen to the people most likely to be journalists. That much of what we have come to accept as commonplace has dulled our curiosity to why so much of what is commonplace is unacceptable; that given the prevailing and escalating inequalities and inequities, we simply do not occupy the same worlds we portend to cover – even when those worlds are right on our door step.
Sustainable Development Labs can bring the benefits of Technology and Innovation to the poorest communities in our cities and nations, providing education, jobs, and growth by channeling IT projects to work with and for the people in those communities.
