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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Community news co-op advocates see the new model they’re shaping as having a high chance for success in places where existing approaches to digital sites might struggle or fail, including in many news deserts. The Banyan Project’s Tom Stites writes about how news co-ops work, pointing out the pros and cons of the model.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is pleased to welcome eight new member organizations based in eight countries, including GIJN’s first members in Greece and Zambia. With these new members, our network now includes 211 organizations in 82 countries.
The 2021 Global Investigative Journalism Conference will be held online this November. But the re-scheduled conference will take place in-person in Sydney, Australia’s harbor city, in October 2022.
In this Q&A, New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth details the little-understood threat posed by zero-day exploits — hacking capabilities that leverage mistakes in the code populating phones and computers around the world.
WhatsApp’s popularity in Latin America and Africa presents an opportunity for emerging, digital-first titles and smaller newsrooms. Laura Oliver explains how newspapers and startups from Zimbabwe to Brazil and South Africa are using the platform in innovative ways to share their stories.
On the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 crisis being declared a global pandemic, outlets around the world looked back on how the coronavirus has transformed our lives. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 8 to 14 found a comprehensive summary of how the health crisis unfolded in the United States by The Washington Post, and a look at the COVID-19 crisis in Hungary. In this edition, we also feature The Economist’s interactive tool estimating the risk posed by COVID-19 based on a person’s health, a story about the ghost towns in Fukushima by NPR, and an analysis of the future of electric cars by The New York Times.
In this GIJN webinar, we bring together two of the authors of the investigation that revealed the names and ranks of officers in the Russian intelligence agency allegedly involved in the poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny and an expert on media ethics. They will discuss the way the investigation was carried out, and how far journalists should go when there is evidence suggesting a crime may have been instigated or committed by government authorities.
Architect Alison Killing says that exploring blanked-out tiles on the mapping site Baidu was the first step in tracking down and identifying the detention centers being built by China in Xinjiang, where up to 1 million people are believed to have been detained.
There is no infallible method for interviewing people who have been victims and survivors of traumatic events such as violence, crimes, disasters, or accidents. But Marcela Turati, co-founder of Mexican investigative journalism nonprofit Quinto Elemento Lab, shares recommendations that can be used as a roadmap to conduct a humane, sensitive, and respectful interview.
For our “My Favorite Tools” series, we spoke with Brazilian journalist Gustavo Faleiros, editor of environmental investigations at the Pulitzer Center where he leads the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN), about mapping deforestation and using data to chart what is happening in global forests.
If you have tried to mix cocktails at home lately, you’re not alone. Tired of waiting for bars and restaurants to reopen, more consumers have started buying premium alcohol, according to data published by the Financial Times. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 1 to 7, which tracks the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter, also found an analysis by Bloomberg showing that global food prices have hit their highest level in six years, an explainer of the connection between bats and virus outbreaks by Reuters, an interactive piece on Atlantic currents by The New York Times, and a musical map by The Pudding.
At least 860 journalists have died from COVID-19 in the last 12 months, according to a European nonprofit that has been tracking cases among media professionals since the start of the pandemic. Latin American countries account for more than half of the tally.
Data analysis and visualization expert Hassel Fallas explains how the visual presentation of facts provided much-needed understanding amid the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. She also shared some of her favorite examples of pandemic data visualization from around the world in 2020.
More universities are devoting resources to the teaching and practice of investigative journalism than ever before, and six recently-launched university-based investigative centers joined GIJN late last year. Olivier Holmey spoke to outlets in Norway, Japan, South Africa, and the Americas to find out what lies behind this growing trend.
While female muckrakers are breaking important stories around the world, the obstacles they face in and out of newsrooms can be gender-based, and there are too few networks and resources catering to these issues. So this International Women’s Day GIJN is re-launching an updated version of its guide, “Resources for Women Journalists.”
For decades, environmentalists have been dreaming about climate-friendly transportation. The arrival of hybrid and electric cars has brought us one step closer to travelling without damaging the planet. And this year, a California start-up promises to push the technology even further by rolling out the first mass-produced solar-powered car. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 22 to 28 features this story alongside an investigation by the Guardian into deaths of migrant workers in Qatar, a cross-border project revealing Hungarian money flowing overseas, and a creative infographic about animals in space.
This webinar will provide strategies and tips to engage and build audiences. It features a digital media advisor with three decades of experience in marketing and audience engagement, an expert on maximizing audiences via social media, and the CEO of a successful investigative outlet with long experience in the issues. It will focus on practical ways to ensure basic strategies and tools are in place to maximize engagement.
