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Stories

2788 posts

My Favorite Tools Reporting Tools & Tips

My Favorite Tools with Quinto Elemento’s Marcela Turati

by Rowan Philp • September 14, 2020

For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke to award-winning Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab, about the resources she uses to investigate disappearances in Mexico’s drug war. While information from victims’ families is paramount, she also shared insights on the value of open source tools, bank records, social media mining, and collaboration with nonprofit forensic teams in tracking the patterns behind the crisis.

GIJN Webinar — Digging into Disappearances: How to Follow the Trail of Missing People

by GIJN Staff • September 10, 2020

Millions of people go missing every year. Some vanish of their own accord, but many are victims of organized crime, security agencies, and criminal states. Journalists play a key role in investigating these disappearances, but the work is difficult, dangerous and often harrowing. In the final webinar of the GIJN series, Digging into Disappearances, we will hear from four senior journalists who have investigated notable missing persons cases related to criminal organizations and criminal conduct.

Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: Beirut Blast, Predicting Crime, US Election Simulators, and COVID in Ukraine

by Eunice Au & Connected Action • September 10, 2020

What was the magnitude of the Beirut port blast and how did it compare to other infamous explosions in history? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from August 31 to September 6 finds Reuters illustrating just how powerful last month’s blast was in relation to the Chernobyl disaster and other explosions. The Tampa Bay Times highlighted how a county sheriff’s office is using an algorithm to supposedly predict and intercept the criminals of the future, while The New York Times used satellite maps to show how physical and political geographies interact across the United States. ESPN has been looking into the potential of people in college football crowds to become COVID-19 super-spreaders, and Slate analyzed the overuse of the word “murmur” in the popular Twilight novel series.

News & Analysis

A Global Tour of Top Investigative Podcasts: The 2020 Edition

by GIJN Staff • September 9, 2020

From South Africa to Tunisia, France to Australia, the podcasts industry is booming. Here is our list of some of the best global podcasts from 2020 — so far! — that are either investigative in nature, or about investigative journalism, and compiled by GIJN’s global team.

News & Analysis

How America’s Toxic Political Polarization Erodes Election Reporting — and 12 Tips to Regain Impact

by Rowan Philp • September 8, 2020

Toxic negative partisanship between Democrats and Republicans is causing media audiences to selectively discount or exaggerate facts presented by reporters ahead of America’s November 3 election. From interviews with audience engagement editors and a survey of research, GIJN identified a dozen techniques that journalists can use to increase the chances that audiences across the divide will at least “hear” the facts they unearth.

New Guide and Webinar Series: How to Report on Disappearances

by Hannah Coogans • September 7, 2020

Reporting of organized crime and missing people is complex and nuanced, and journalists must be both careful and deliberate in their approach. GIJN’s new guide rounds up case studies and examples of published investigations, relevant organizations to be aware of during the research stage, and tips for on-the-ground reporting.

Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: Tracking Police Accountability; Racism and Housing; China’s Hidden Prison Camps

by Eunice Au & Connected Action • September 3, 2020

The police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African American man, in the United States has reignited national unrest just months after the death of George Floyd. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from August 24 to 30 finds ProPublica documenting police violence against Black Lives Matter protesters and tracking police accountability. The New York Times shows how the process of redlining, or denying mortgage finance to predominantly Black neighborhoods from the 1930s onwards, has resulted in heat disparities among cities, and BuzzFeed News uncovers scores of new internment camps in Xinjiang, China, by analyzing satellite data.

How They Did It News & Analysis

How They Did It: Collaborating Across a Continent on Latin America’s Untold Migrant Stories

by Mariana Limón • September 2, 2020

In the project Migrantes de otro mundo — Migrants from Another World — a team of more than 40 journalists in more than a dozen countries decided to collaborate to tell the untold story of the migrants from Asia and Africa who travel through Latin America each year. As the creators of the project put it: “By its wandering nature, migration is a story that can only be properly told through collaboration.”

My Favorite Tools Reporting Tools & Tips

My Favorite Tools with Brazilian Journalist Sérgio Spagnuolo

by Mariel Lozada • September 1, 2020

For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Sérgio Spagnuolo, founder and editor of the Brazilian data journalism agency Volt Data Lab. He has worked on disinformation and data verification before founding Volt, an independent journalism agency focused on investigating, analyzing, and visualizing data.

Reporting Tools & Tips

How We Proved That the Biggest Black Lives Matter Page on Facebook Was Fake

by Donie O'Sullivan • August 31, 2020

CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan describes how he and a colleague were able to discover, and then prove, that the largest Black Lives Matter Facebook page in 2018 was an Australia-based scam. O’Sullivan also provides insights into the value of good archive sites and domain registration tools in investigating suspicious social media pages, in conjunction with traditional reporting methods.

Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: North Korea Ghost Ships, Trolls Attack WHO, Al Pacino’s Wardrobe, COVID Air Travel

by Eunice Au & Connected Action • August 27, 2020

Satellite imagery has become increasingly useful in establishing evidence of human rights abuses and in shining a light on dubious activities being conducted in secretive parts of the world. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from August 17 to 23 finds NBC News utilizing satellite data to solve a long-standing mystery about North Korean “ghost boats” washing up on Japanese shores, The New York Times analyzing footfall data to determine how the coronavirus pandemic has influenced consumer spending, and Bellingcat revealing a coordinated network of attacks on Twitter against the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO).

News & Analysis Safety & Security

How Journalists Are Coping with a Heightened Surveillance Threat

by Rowan Philp • August 26, 2020

Investigative reporters around the world are tightening their digital safety habits, out of concern that emergency pandemic laws, new spy technologies, and the lockdown itself have exposed journalists to even greater threats of surveillance and harassment. A dozen reporters and experts interviewed by GIJN agreed that sound digital hygiene was no longer optional for journalists in the COVID-19 world — and offered 10 security tips, including threat modelling, encrypted document transfer, and virtual burner phones.

Research

5 Tips to Help Journalists Report on Coronavirus Vaccines

by Kerry Dooley Young • August 25, 2020

To help reporters make sense of what’s known and yet to be learned about COVID-19 vaccines, Journalist’s Resource asked for insights from several people with expertise studying or reporting on vaccines.

News & Analysis

Doc’ of the Day: US Indictment of Ex-Trump Advisor Bannon

by GIJN Staff • August 25, 2020

The federal indictment of Stephen Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former senior campaign advisor, provides a chilling case study in how fraudsters can exploit the fervor of political supporters in a partisan landscape.

Reporting Tools & Tips

Using Earth Observation Data to Do Investigations from the Sky

by Shivaprakash Yaragal • August 24, 2020

The democratization of satellite technology and the entry of private companies into the field of space means it’s now possible to have access to high spatio-temporal data at a very minimal cost, leading to interesting investigative stories. In the coming years as the democratization of satellite technology gathers pace, more and more cases that had been undocumented or unreported will see the light of the day.

Digging into Disappearances: Organized Crime and Missing People

by GIJN Staff • August 24, 2020

In this GIJN webinar, Digging into Disappearances: Organized Crime and Missing People, on Tuesday, September 8 at 9:00am EST, we bring together two senior investigative journalists who will share their strategies and tips on how to investigate a disappearance, how to manage sources, victims and authorities, as well as raise some of the broader considerations of investigating criminal organizations.

Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: Election Forecasts, The Sweatpants Era, Hong Kong Protests, DJ in Eastern Europe & Caucasus

by Eunice Au & Connected Action • August 20, 2020

One of the biggest issues that comes with visualizing election forecasts is how to incorporate uncertainty in a way that is understandable to readers. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from August 10 to 16 finds FiveThirtyEight explaining their election forecast design process and considerations. Elsewhere, The New York Times Magazine has been digging into the collapse of the fashion industry, and the Hong Kong Free Press is teaming up with the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of The University of Hong Kong to expand its protest research archive.

News & Analysis

After 6 Months of COVID-19, What’s Next for Pandemic Reporting?

by Rowan Philp • August 19, 2020

After six months of the global crisis, investigative journalists find themselves reporting on a precarious and demoralized world, which has seen millions of jobs and more than 775,000 lives lost. In a GIJN webinar titled “Where do we go from here?”, a panel of senior journalists from Bosnia, India, Uganda, and the United States shared tips on the topics now ripe for investigation, as well as areas to improve on.

Data Journalism

From Relationships to Ranking: Angles for Your Next Data Story

by Paul Bradshaw • August 18, 2020

British data journalism instructor Paul Bradshaw analyzed 100 pieces of data journalism and identified seven common story angles. Here, he uses real-world examples to show how common angles can generate useful story ideas, and the strategies and considerations that reporters should keep in mind.

Reporting Tools & Tips

Beyond Viral Clips and Lip Syncing: A Guide to Investigating on TikTok

by Annique Mossou and Johanna Wild • August 17, 2020

TikTok, a video-sharing site where users can post videos of themselves dancing, lip syncing, and doing viral challenges, has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. While many posts are focused on jokes and music, TikTok has surpassed 2 billion downloads and is popular around the world, which presents opportunities for the open source research community to use the platform in investigations. This guide explains how.

Data Journalism

Data Journalism Top 10: Herd Immunity Calculator, Post-COVID Offices, Back-to-School Jitters

by Eunice Au & Connected Action • August 13, 2020

How many people need to get infected or die of the coronavirus before we reach a herd immunity threshold? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from August 3 to 9 finds that The Washington Post created a herd immunity calculator to estimate this. Also in the Data Journalism Top 10 this week: BBC’s Visual and Data Journalism team illustrates the future of work environments post-COVID-19, The New York Times shares projections of the potential number of children who may carry the virus back to school in the fall according to county, and Oregon Public Broadcasting discovers a surprising reason for the low incidence of coronavirus transmission in bars and restaurants in the US state of Oregon. 

Reporting Tools & Tips

Use World Bank Records to Track COVID-19 Spending in Your Country

by Toby McIntosh • August 12, 2020

There is widespread concern that corruption will affect the use of international funds being rushed out in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. GIJN has created a guide to using World Bank documents online to track the use of the Bank’s projects in more than 100 countries.   

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