Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://gijn.org/category/tips-tools/)
Early this February, we launched a new series on investigative tips and tools to add to our Resource Center for journalists worldwide who want to dig deeper and ask tougher questions. Now, this compact set of crash seminars featuring leading experts with insights on how to better investigate has been translated into four additional languages and will be released over the coming weeks.
A documentary producer, a BBC reporter, and a human rights researcher shared eight steps toward gathering and using user-generated content for investigations at the recent Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Hamburg. Here’s Charlotte Alfred for GIJN on how it’s done.
Search engines only show a small fraction of the content that is actually available online. Leonie Kijewski highlights four tips on finding databases that can give you all the info that Google won’t, based on journalist Albrecht Ude’s presentation at the recent Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Hamburg.
Investigative reporters have a bit of a reputation for being troublemakers — both outside and inside their newsrooms. Sometimes, this can get in the way of their work. In his new book “Investigative Journalism: A Survival Guide,” David Leigh gives sensible advice for those who wish to not only get along with their bosses, but to see their stories published.
Do you know how to use TweetDeck to copy someone else’s Twitter list, then tailor it to your own needs? How about using it to search Instagram? Even if you’ve been using TweetDeck for years, you may still learn a trick or two from this comprehensive guide by Bellingcat investigator and trainer Charlotte Godart.
The legal system constantly produces information on the behavior of powerful people and entities. Based on his latest research, law expert Roy Shapira has unpacked for GIJN how investigative reporters can use the full potential of legal sources for better reporting.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Fabiola Torres of Salud Con Lupa. She told GIJN’s Gaelle Faure all about the tools that help her carry out cross-border investigations into public health, including tools to find data as well as to analyze and visualize it.
Sometimes, the best way to tell a story is to take a bird’s eye view. Here’s how Storybench editor Aleszu Bajak did this by recreating a GIF of Chennai’s disappearing Lake Puzhal reservoir. Check out his process and code, which could be used for countless other animations — to show, say, dam collapses, deforestation, forest fires, and more.
Sharing is caring. The Financial Times created templates for different types of digital stories and has now shared them on GitHub so that other newsrooms can adapt them.
There are many ways to measure impact — but you don’t need to do it all on your own. Here are six impact measurement frameworks appropriate for media makers and funders with various needs and approaches, selected by Media Impact Funders.
Christopher Booker’s “The Seven Basic Plots” provides a useful set of frameworks. It’s a book about fictional storytelling, but you will find the same structures recurring in longform and investigative work, writes Paul Bradshaw.
