No law enforcement agency announced any criminal investigation into the attempted murder of Russia’s leading opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, after he was poisoned with a chemical weapon in Russia last year. Instead, investigative journalists stepped forward. In a GIJN webinar, journalists from Bellingcat and Russia’s The Insider explained how, and why, they used black market data to help expose the true culprits behind that attack.
Sundance Film Festival
Q&A with Carrie Lozano: Sundance’s New Head of Documentary Filmmaking
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Carrie Lozano is a talented storyteller, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and recently became the director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program. She spoke to GIJN’s Spanish editor, Andrea Arzaba, about the challenges and opportunities for documentary filmmakers and how her background has shaped her work.
News & Analysis
Lessons in Transitioning from Legacy Media to Digital: Expert Tips from Asia
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The pandemic has posed an additional threat to news media around the world, underscoring the need for legacy media to go digital. In a recent series of GIJN workshops on media transformation, experts spoke about their journey and the need for a shift in mindset across every area of the business.
Data Journalism
How We Built the Data Visualization That Brought Brazil’s COVID Deaths Close to Home
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When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit Brazil, a team of data journalists set out to illustrate what the death toll looked like by creating a data visualization that presented something beyond the numbers. The team considered various ways of displaying the story. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how they created At the Epicenter.
top reads
GIJN Bookshelf: A Dozen Books for Muckrakers in 2021
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At GIJN we’re fortunate to come across various books and reports on the state of the news media and great investigative reporting. Here are 12 of the more interesting recent volumes we’ve found that investigative journalists might want to pick up in 2021, as well as a novel written by an investigative reporter for a little light relief.
Top 10 in Data Journalism
Data Journalism Top 10: Beauty Biz Bias, Suez Blockage, Facebook Fail, Migrants at the Border, Europe’s Theaters
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For nearly a week, a giant container ship stranded in the Suez Canal blocked one of the busiest trade routes in the world. The Ever Given, a Rotterdam-bound vessel, was finally freed from the shoreline on Monday, and international media have closely followed the story and the consequences of the blockage. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 22 to 28, which tracks the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter, found a visual story by the Reuters Graphics team that illustrated how the incident affected global trade. In this edition, we also feature an examination of bias in the beauty industry by The Pudding, a look into how the pandemic changed society by Al Jazeera, and a guide to drawing data visualizations by DataJournalism.com.
audience engagement
12 Tips on Reaching More People and Getting Bigger Impact on Investigative Stories
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In a GIJN webinar on audience engagement, editors and digital marketing experts shared tips and resources on how to reach and engage with audiences by maximizing the impact of stories, and by using carefully curated newsletters.
Data Journalism
Twitter’s #ddj Hashtag and the Evolution of the Data Journalism Community
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In this excerpt, drawn from “The Data Journalism Handbook,” GIJN’s Eunice Au and sociologist Marc Smith explain how the widespread use of the #ddj hashtag among data journalism communities has made it a prominent resource for sharing projects, as well as the ability to track the evolution of data journalism work.
corruption
A 10-Step Program to Fight Kleptocracy Around the World
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In this excerpt from his new book on protecting democracy, Larry Diamond, founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, outlines 10 steps to combat kleptocracy around the world. Among them is the need to end the use of anonymous shell companies and “increase international support for investigative journalism.”
Member Profiles
How iFact Is Transforming Investigative Reporting in the Republic of Georgia
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When Nino Bakradze was growing up in Georgia in the ’90s, the country was embroiled in a civil war and a post-USSR economic crisis. In a media landscape dominated by state TV, investigative journalism just didn’t happen. The situation hadn’t changed much when she graduated, so she set up iFact to turn the tables. GIJN’s Alexandra Tyan spoke to the team.
Data Journalism
Data Journalism Top 10: March Madness, Trafficking Tigers and Fish, Color Palettes, Vaccine Inequality, Domestic Work
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A lack of comprehensive data can seriously hinder efforts to track illicit activities. But persistent reporters will always find a way to get a glimpse of the real picture. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 15 to 21 found Oxpeckers investigating the trafficking of tigers in Europe and journalist Ben Heubl offering advice on investigating illegal fishing. We also feature an analysis of the global aviation crisis by the Financial Times, a guide to color scales by visual storytelling expert Lisa Charlotte Rost, and a look into the burden of unpaid domestic work by data analyst Hassel Fallas.