From my experience of more than eight years managing transactions and capacity building programs in Latin America and Africa, a radical approach to transparency is the key to enable public-private partnerships to deliver more and better infrastructure services. The crude truth is that opaque policies serve a lot of interests, but almost none of them benefit service users or taxpayers.
What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are the Top Ten links for Jun 4-11: 60 Years of European World Cup Data (@elmundoes); 4 cheap ways to put ddj in newsrooms (@IJNet); ICIJ’s data team (@ICIJorg); events in Argentina (@HacksHackersBA) & Italy @Glocalnews); @knightfdn grants.
We’re already seeing the use of drones proliferate across a whole variety of stories — from incredible imagery of the vastness of the natural world to investigations that couldn’t be told with conventional cameras, to views of the inaccessible right under our noses. So how are the drone journalists of the future being trained for their work?
I am back from Philadelphia, where I attended my first annual conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors, the world’s largest and oldest association of investigative journalists. The conference featured plenty of research resources and other useful online tools. Here’s a roundup featuring some of the highlights.
Here’s your chance to support the global spread of investigative journalism. We need your help to sponsor dozens of journalists from developing and transitioning countries to come to the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Norway this October 8-11.
What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are the Top Ten links for May 29-June 4: Free Software and Tools for Investigative Journalists (@DDJ_Tools); Debunking ddj Myths (@jsource); The Art & Science of ddj, German Rent Index (@zeitonline), Swiss Election Dataviz (@srfdata) and more.
In the fall of 2003 the story made its way to journalists at La Nación, the leading national newspaper in the Central American republic of Costa Rica. The reporters at the paper’s investigative unit pricked up their ears as soon as the disgruntled real estate agent spoke the name of her exasperating client: Eliseo Vargas, the man in charge of the country’s vaunted national health-care agency. “We didn’t really know what she had,” recalls reporter Ernesto Rivera.
What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are the Top Ten links for May 22-29: Atlas of Germany’s far right (@rechtesland), same-sex marriage (@insightnewslab), Code for Africa Fellowships (@ICFJ), World Bank resettlements (@ICIJorg), open data conference (@opendatacon), and more.
How do reporters know when their sources are telling the truth? In the collapse of Rolling Stone’s November story on campus rape, a gullible reporter relied far too heavily on the unchallenged word of an alleged victim. Heinrich Böhmke, an adviser to the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting, takes a look back at the case and warns that journalists should learn from the law and apply a tough standard even when sources are convincing, confident, and have consistent stories.
We’re back with another selection of web resources and reports that might be of interest to journalists around the world. On the list this week: new reports from the International Labour Organization, Congressional Research Service, and UK House of Commons; and tools to search domain ownership, load tweets into a spreadsheet, and search open data. Good hunting!
