Stories
Data Journalism
Here’s Why Investigative Reporters Need to Know Knowledge Graphs
Across the data science community, knowledge graphs have become a growing phenomenon in recent years, driving many applications including virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa. Friedrich Lindenberg, from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, writes about how its data platform Aleph makes use of knowledge graphs to help investigative reporters analyze and cross-reference data.
News & Analysis
The Real Reason I Took a Break From Reporting Aboriginal Deaths in Australia
After investigating the death of a 17-year-old Aboriginal Australian for six years, investigative journalist Allan Clarke took time off to reflect on the systemic racism suffered by Australia’s Indigenous people — and the frustration of reporting these stories for societies that don’t recognize their true horror.
New GIJN Online Series Starts September 2020
Since the start of the pandemic, GIJN has produced more than 40 free webinars in 7 languages designed for journalists covering the COVID-19 crisis. Come September, GIJN will expand its online offerings on a range of new topics, with continued coverage of the pandemic.
News & Analysis
What We’re Reading: Podcasts for Journalists, News on Instagram, Immersive Storytelling Ethics, US COVID Testing Goes “Poof”
In this week’s Friday 5, where we round up key reads from around the world in English, Journalism.co.uk lines up six new podcasts for journalists, the Guardian rings in on the needs of the Instagram news generation, and the Online News Association takes a look at the ethics of immersive storytelling.
Data Journalism
Data Journalism Top 10: Climate Migrants, COVID Testing Disparities, Outbreak Epicenters, Brazil’s Military
In the midst of the pandemic, some newsrooms haven’t forgotten about the issue of climate change. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 20 to 26 found ProPublica partnering with The New York Times Magazine to examine climate migration and where climate refugees are moving to. On the COVID-19 front, FiveThirtyEight revealed the disparities in the availability of testing sites between Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and white areas, broadcaster RBB highlighted that the risk of coronavirus was more keenly felt by low-income earners, and the Google News Initiative and Agência Lupa communicated the impact of the coronavirus by visually putting readers at the epicenter of an outbreak.
News & Analysis
Collaborating to Identify COVID-19’s Victims in New York City
When a team of student journalists realized that thousands of New Yorkers had died due to COVID-19 but had been left out of the obituary pages, they teamed up to create Missing Them, an ambitious collaborative journalism project working to memorialize everyone that died due to COVID-19 in one of the hardest-hit cities in America.
News & Analysis
How Data Journalists Exposed the Real COVID-19 Death Toll in Brazil
With the help of two former students, Brazilian data journalist Marcelo Soares collected data showing that deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil’s cities were far higher than authorities claimed. Check out how he did it.
News & Analysis
How Leading Photojournalists Around the World Are Documenting COVID-19
In interviews with GIJN, six leading photojournalists from around the world described six very different approaches for dealing with the safety, access, and technical challenges of shooting the pandemic. From using bulletproof vests and embedding strategies to projected images and screenshots of Zoom meetings, these photographers detailed some of the creative thinking needed to document a world in lockdown.
GIJN Webinar — Where Do We Go From Here? New Avenues for Investigative Reporting on the COVID-19 Crisis
We are six months into the COVID-19 crisis, and this global pandemic is far from over. To mark this milestone, GIJN is pleased to offer its 18th webinar in our series Investigating the Pandemic. Where Do We Go From Here? – New Avenues for Investigative Reporting on the Pandemic will reflect on what investigative journalism has achieved so far and what challenges lie ahead.
News & Analysis
What We’re Reading: Pakistani and Zimbabwean Journalists Detained, Race and the Newsroom, and Tips for Interviewing
In this week’s Friday 5, where we round up key reads from around the world in English, one journalist from Zimbabwe and another from Pakistan were abducted and detained, the Reuters Institute report on Race and Leadership in the News Media was released, and NPR’s Terry Gross and The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro offered up some tips on interviewing.
Data Journalism
Data Journalism Top 10: Measuring Mask Use, Parental Interruptions, Childbirth Woes, India’s Low Death Rate
How widespread is mask use in your country? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 13 to 19 finds The New York Times mapping the odds of people encountering other mask wearers in the United States, two university professors quantifying the number of interruptions a parent suffers on average every hour while working from home, the Committee to Protect Journalists talking to data journalists about the struggles of reporting on COVID-19, and openDemocracy documenting cases of mistreatment of women in labor around the world since the pandemic started.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Need Tech Support for Your Members Program? Start Here
There is no singular “right” way to set up technology for an audience-centric newsroom. What’s most important is not which tool you choose, or the method by which you implement them, but that your system is well-integrated. Each part must be able to speak to all the others, allowing your data to flow seamlessly, and empowering your team with easy-to-understand workflows that help you better connect with your audience.
Member Profiles
Powering Up Geo-Journalism for Investigative Environmental Reporting
The South African investigative site Oxpeckers uses a combination of data analysis, collaboration, and interactive data visualization tools to tell the most compelling stories about the land and those accused of damaging it. From mining to environmental crimes and wildlife trafficking, it has brought investigative techniques to beats like mining that were once the preserve of business reporters.
News & Analysis
Document of the Day: In Defense of Data Scraping
In a filing to the Supreme Court in the United States, a raft of media organizations including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Associated Press, The Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, The Center for Investigative Reporting, The Daily Beast, Dow Jones, VICE ,and The Washington Post, have argued that the interpretation of the country’s Computer Fraud and Abuse Act needs to be narrowed to avoid “serious constitutional concerns.” In the document, which can be read in full here, the organizations argue that an interpretation of the law by the court of appeals “chills ordinary journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment.”
News & Analysis
What We’re Reading: On the Pandemic Frontlines, Gov’t Responses to COVID-19, and the Global Autocratic Crackdown
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the world in English, we found a helpful database that’s tracking government responses to COVID-19 with the help of 400 researchers, a multimedia project on how eight journalists from around the world are coping with reporting during the pandemic, and a piece on how autocrats are cracking down on independent news sites.
Data Journalism
Data Journalism Top 10: COVID-19 Racial Inequity, Cash for the Connected, Africa’s Silent Epidemic, Amazon Safety
The coronavirus pandemic has upended the lives of people around the world, but some communities are especially hard hit. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 6 to 12 finds The New York Times analyzing data that reveals Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, The Washington Post highlighting that business relief funds for the pandemic have gone to the rich and well-connected, and Bloomberg looking at more than 120 US businesses that say the coronavirus helped force them into bankruptcy.
GIJN Webinar — Investigating the Pandemic: Open Source Investigations in Africa
In this third Africa-focused GIJN webinar, we bring together three journalists from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Kenya who have used open-source tools during the COVID-19 crisis to produce groundbreaking investigations. They will share tips and insights on the tools they have used, the information they unearthed, how they turned their findings into compelling stories, and the impact that those stories have had.
My Favorite Tools Reporting Tools & Tips
My Favorite Tools with BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Craig Silverman, who leads a global beat on misinformation and media manipulation for BuzzFeed News. An author and award-winning journalist, Silverman shared some his top open source tools for digital investigations and for probing disinformation.
Data Journalism
Document of the Day: Monitoring Helicopter Movements During DC’s Protests
The investigative team behind a story in The Washington Post that focused on two military helicopters that roared over demonstrators in Washington, DC on June 1 shared the exploratory scripts used to analyze and visualize flight data for the aircraft which monitored protesters in the city that day.
News & Analysis
Aggressive Reporting, Fierce Writing, and FOI Requests: How a Small Town Editor Won a Pulitzer
When Jeff Gerritt first started asking questions about deaths in Texas jails, he was told “it’s not news for someone to die in county jail.” But his reporting and the Op Ed pieces that resulted from it led to a Pulitzer Prize, a rare win for a scrappy thrice-weekly paper in an era where the journalism industry is seeing increasing cutbacks and layoffs.
News & Analysis
What We’re Reading: Systems Thinking for Journalists, Freelancer Tips, and Tracking Locust Swarms
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the world in English, includes a toolkit for journalists on systems thinking from The New School, freelancer tips from the Pulitzer Center, and Bellingcat’s latest guide on tracking the locust swarms affecting East Africa.
Data Journalism
Data Journalism Top 10: Pace of Global COVID-19 Deaths, Who Can Work from Home, Visualizations for the Colorblind, Skin Tone and Sports
It is hard to comprehend the true impact of COVID-19 around the world. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from June 29 to July 5 finds Reuters trying to visualize the alarming rate of deaths related to the coronavirus pandemic, Datawrapper examining which employees can actually afford to work from home, and data journalist Carmen Aguilar García writing about using R programming language and automating repetitive data processes in order to keep up with the demand for pandemic news.
6 Tools and 6 Techniques Reporters Can Use to Unmask the Actors behind COVID-19 Disinformation
With fact checking organizations having already debunked thousands of falsehoods about COVID-19, investigative reporters are turning their focus to the people and the money behind deliberate disinformation surrounding the pandemic. In a series of interviews with GIJN, seven journalists shared the inside story on how they exposed the forces behind the lies, as well as key tips on the tools and techniques that aided their investigations.
News & Analysis
Should Journalists Do Advocacy? Here’s a Unique Approach Out of South Africa
An investigative outfit with an advocacy program may raise eyebrows. But in South Africa, amaBhungane has scored major wins for transparency and free speech.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Freelancing During the Pandemic: A Pitching Guide and Free Webinar for Investigative Reporters
Freelancing as an investigative journalist is challenging in the best of times, and more so during a pandemic. GIJN’s latest guide offers broad guidance on pitching, financial support, and networking for freelancers as the COVID-19 crisis continues. Be sure to catch our free webinar — Freelance Investigative Journalism During the Time of COVID — on Thursday July 9 at 9:00 EST as part of GIJN’s Investigating the Pandemic series.
News & Analysis
What We’re Reading: Facebook’s Original Reporting Algorithm, Academic and Journalism Collaborations, and the Race Problem in Europe’s Newsrooms
This week’s Friday 5, where we round up our favorite reads from around the online world in English, includes a recent algorithm change on Facebook’s News Feed that will boost original news stories, lessons learned on an academic and investigative journalism collaboration, and European media’s race problem.