Here’s a preview of what GIJN and partners have in store: Online search strategies, cross-border collaboration, satellite imagery, climate change, crime and corruption, health and medicine, Indigenous issues, women and muckraking, elections, dealing with burnout, flight tracking, podcasts, documentaries, the latest security tips, plus data, data, and more data.
Our NodeXL mapping from July 19 to 25, which tracks the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter each week, found imaginative data-driven coverage of the Olympics by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other major outlets. In this edition, we also feature a piece by Reuters Graphics on how a Chinese lake has been decimated by sand mining, a cross-border investigation into the billion Euro business of elder care, and a deep dive into TikTok’s secretive algorithm by The Wall Street Journal.
Newsletters are popular because their offering is different from the information that is dangerously filtered and molded by social media giant’s random, opaque algorithms. GIJN has selected five original newsletters that can inspire journalists around the world.
Many reporters never notice the “inspect element” option below the “copy” and save-as” functions in the right-click menu on any webpage related to their investigation. But it turns out that this little-used web inspector tool can dig up a wealth of hidden information from a site’s source code, reveal the raw data behind graphics, and download images and videos that supposedly cannot be saved.
Talya Cooper spent several years working alongside journalists in a newsroom, where she witnessed some “unholy messes” of files on both physical and virtual desktops. But as she writes here, while taking good care of data requires some time and money the loss of irreplaceable reporting work can come at a higher cost.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is delighted to announce the selection of three Asian media organizations as participants in our new Investigative Journalism Assessment Program (IJ-MAP): The Caravan magazine in India, the KBR radio network in Indonesia; and the nonprofit Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
How do you increase your readers’ interest in climate stories? Two award-winning projects from the online team at Norway’s NRK offer insight that could help newsrooms increase impact and engagement in climate coverage.
Our NodeXL mapping from July 12 to 18, which tracks the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter each week, found a series of articles resulting from the collaborative project that analyzed an unprecedented leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers selected for surveillance. In this edition, we also feature an insight into Facebook’s data wars by The New York Times, an interactive piece by Al Jazeera on how the holy city of Mecca has expanded, and a colorful project by the Washington Post on the rise of K-pop.
The roots of today’s increasingly captured media in India lie deep and go back a couple of decades to the seemingly innocuous newspaper business practices of India’s largest media company, Bennett Coleman & Company, founded in 1838. The resulting, industry-wide cap on newspaper subscription prices in India has, over time, created a very unhealthy, near 100-percent dependence on advertising.
After more than a year of living with a pandemic that shut down the world, lockdowns are beginning to lift for many across the globe. But for many journalists – a number of whom are already struggling with traumas of their own in a beleaguered industry known for its hostile and pressure-cooker environments – concerns are mounting about an impending mental health crisis brought on by a year of mass isolation, uncertainty, and endless dread.
The US Justice Department indicted five Iranian intelligence officials last week, alleging they were part of a plot to surveil and eventually abduct an Iranian-American investigative journalist living in the US. Read the indictment.
Fundamentally, journalists and scholars do similar work – diving into documents, crunching numbers, conducting interviews. But their timeframes, and their measures of success, can be quite different. The Global Reporting Centre tries to bridge that gap, both by funding such collaborations and serving as an ambassador between two very different cultures.
Ten years ago, terror attacks in Norway claimed the lives of 77 people and seriously injured at least 40. Our NodeXL mapping from July 5 to 11 found an interactive timeline piece by Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang telling the story of a tragic event that impacted an entire nation. In this edition, we also feature an investigation by Reuters into a Chinese company harvesting genetic data from pregnant women, a series on gun violence in Chicago by The Trace, and a look at “silent” Russian politicians by IStories.
Since 1998, El Faro has fought for accountability in El Salvador, a Central American country saddled with stubborn poverty, a history of civil conflict, and pervasive criminal gangs. But after decades of investigating criminal organizations, corruption, and illegal practices by security forces, the newspaper might be facing one of its greatest challenges yet.
Here’s how three Mexican investigative journalists have used public information requests to aid their reporting on drug trafficking and the government’s fight against it.
High vaccination rates in some parts of the world are helping to curb the spread of COVID-19 and allowing communities to resume normal life. But vaccinations can also give a false sense of security, with new variants threatening to prolong the pandemic. Our NodeXL mapping from June 28 to July 4, found Portuguese newspaper Público creating a tool to help readers find out what activities they can do after getting the vaccine at minimal risk. In this edition, we also take a look at a piece examining forest fires in Mexico, an analysis of the worst cyberattacks by Bloomberg, and a lively data-driven essay on same-gender lyrics by The Pudding.
For many investigations — especially those involving corporations, or institutions in the West — the final step is to send a letter that sets out your findings and urges a response. Here, several investigative reporters share their tips on how to deal with obstructive subjects and ensure fairness — including fairness for dangerous governments that cannot be alerted to your findings before publication.
The 2021 Global Investigative Journalism Conference is this November 1-5, and for the first time, we’re doing it all online. The conference is the seminal international event in investigative journalism, featuring practical panels and workshops on the latest investigative techniques, data analysis, online research, cross-border collaboration, and more by the best journalists in the field. Since 2001, we’ve trained over 8,000 reporters, sparked headline-making collaborations, and spread investigative reporting worldwide.
The Reporter is known in Taiwan for its in-depth investigative stories. The team behind it recently launched a podcast, which surged into the charts soon after it was launched. Here host Jason Liu and producer Lan Wanchen tell GIJN about their experience in making podcasts related to investigative journalism and their tips for making a program that audiences want to listen to.
More than 130 journalists were killed in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Honduras in the years between 2011 and 2020, many of them attacked while investigating political issues, corruption, and organized crime. RSF has analyzed the attacks and found that half of the journalists had received threats related to their work.
With less than a month until the start of the Olympic Games, host country Japan’s slow vaccination campaign is causing concern. Our NodeXL mapping from June 21 to 27 found a piece by The New York Times looking at Japan’s efforts to combat the pandemic in the run-up to a global sporting event. In this edition, we also feature a joint investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times into Chinese propaganda on the internet, a herd immunity calculator by German newspaper Zeit, and revelations from the Guardian about abusive posts on social media targeting English soccer players.
A recent report published by the Forum on Information & Democracy’s Working Group on the Sustainability of Journalism says the journalism industry is experiencing a “potential extinction event” as the certainties (chiefly the advertising-supported model) under which journalism operated for 40 to 50 years continues to fall away.
Award-winning author Jessica Goudeau, who won the 2021 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for best American nonfiction writing from the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, discusses the need to tell stories of displaced people in fresh ways, starting with empathy.
Local reporters have been finding innovative ways to report on the death and devastation caused by India’s devastating second wave of the coronavirus – even as the authorities tried to downplay the severity of the crisis. Bhavya Dore speaks to reporters who staked out the banks of the river Ganges and stationed themselves outside morgues and hospitals to investigate what was really happening.
A sunken ship with a toxic cargo threatens to cause one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of Sri Lanka. Our NodeXL mapping from June 14 to 20 found a story by The Washington Post examining what caused the incident and evaluating the potential damage to marine wildlife. In this edition we also feature a piece by Al Jazeera evaluating 70 years of journeys made by refugees, an investigation into recyclable waste by Brazilian news outlet Metrópoles, and take a look at the winners of the 2021 Sigma Awards recognizing the best data journalism around the globe.
In a panel at IRE21 — the annual conference hosted by Investigative Reporters & Editors — veteran reporters shared a dozen tools and tips that can help time-pressed beat reporters keep investigations running ‘on the side.’
It is well known that trust in journalism is low among some audiences. Outlets need to be more open, accessible, and accountable. Audio offers a simple and effective means to do that.
