Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://gijn.org/category/development-2/)
You don’t need a million casual readers — just 1,000 committed ones. And there are signs that the “1,000 true fans” theory holds approximately true across a wide range of journalism enterprises — sometimes it’s actually a thousand; other times it’s 400, 1,500, or 5,000.
OpenStreetMap is the self-proclaimed Wikipedia of maps. It’s a free and open-source sketch of the globe, created by a volunteer pool that essentially crowdsources the map, tracing parts of the world that haven’t yet been logged. But despite its democratic aims, it’s still much like the mapping world overall — overwhelmingly dominated by male cartographers. That’s starting to change.
Membership programs are in a state of rapid evolution as more organizations see them as an imperative way to diversify revenue. The Membership Puzzle Project, a public research project into membership models, spoke to publishers around the world who have membership programs to find out what they have learned.
Open data can bring much value to China, especially with regard to government efficiency and effectiveness, data-informed decision-making, and increasing the public’s trust through greater engagement. Although there have been improvements in the quality and availability of government open data in China, data expert Yolanda Ma states that there are still many more challenges to overcome.
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.
