Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://gijn.org/category/profiles/)
It’s what readers want, it’s what funders want, it’s what editors want, it’s even what reporters want: The elusive yet ever-important impact that hopefully comes after reporting a story. Here’s a look into the new role of impact editor at the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
When reporters for Puerto Rico’s Centro de Periodismo Investigativo — its Center for Investigative Journalism — first published hundreds of pages of a leaked Telegram chat involving high-ranking officials, they had no idea this would lead to massive street protests and end in the governor’s resignation. This huge story followed the Center’s award-winning work exposing how the death toll from Hurricane Maria in 2017 was far in excess of what officials admitted. GIJN’s Gaelle Faure spoke to CPI’s executive editor Carla Minet to find out what’s next for her team.
Connecting with your audience is key to telling a good story. But how do you actually make it happen? Podcast producer Siobhán McHugh explains how she uses emotion — and lots of technique — to connect with her listeners.
Two investigative editors took huge pay cuts to launch Botswana’s first nonprofit newsroom. A year later, they took another, temporary cut just to pay for a single satellite image that proved that the country’s president had abused state funds to build a private lodge. Here’s Rowan Philp on the INK Centre for Investigative Journalism for GIJN’s member series.
Venezuelan investigative website Armando.info, which is a member of GIJN, is going through difficult times. Its core team has been working in exile for more than a year, and their staff continue to receive serious threats — not only against their reporters working in Venezuela, but also against those who have found refuge in neighboring Colombia.
Hicham Mansouri, who co-founded the Moroccan Association of Investigative Journalists, had to flee his country after he was jailed for 10 months. Now exiled in France, he still faces pending charges of threatening state security in Morocco.
Pakistan’s journalism landscape has lately come under immense pressure from the country’s powerful military. In one of the latest moves to pressure Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English newspaper, the government revoked its ads for the paper, as well as for its sister TV channel, DawnNews. Umer Ali writes for GIJN about the crises.
A small nonprofit investigative newsroom played an outsized role in the removal of South Africa’s president and his corrupt inner circle last year. Now, amaBhungane is building a separate hub to help new investigative start-ups throughout southern Africa. Rowan Philp writes about the newsroom and its latest initiative for GIJN’s new series about its members.
“Synopsis,” “soundtrack,” “episode,” “mood”… This is the language used daily within the Parisian offices of Les Jours. But don’t let its vocabulary fool you: While the 3-year old media company borrows many of the codes of fiction producers for television, it actually runs a hard-hitting investigative news site.
Public records sometimes say the darnedest things. One example: A declassified memo from 1977 shows that the NSA wondered if psychics could nuke cities so that they became lost in time and space (yes, like in the post-apocalyptic anime Akira). Other times, it’s what they don’t say — like when the FBI found it necessary to redact the name of Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent.
Journalism has taken Bektour Iskender through revolutions, death threats and even a crowdfunded space venture. Along the way, he’s trained dozens of teenage investigative journalists in Kyrgyzstan.
