In the seven years since the Arab Spring, hope has given way to deep disappointment. Arab officials are increasingly operating with impunity, and by failing to question, investigate and then reveal, journalists are indirectly complicit. Rana Sabbagh, executive director of the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism calls on journalists in the Arab world not to remain silent bystanders in the face of wrongdoing.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 26 to December 2 finds @VRCCrimCam mapping London’s medieval murder hotspots, @geckoboard illustrating common data fallacies to avoid, @ddjournalism teases the beta launch of the Data Journalism Handbook 2.0, and @GoogleNewsInit displays its data journalism courses.
Investigative journalism in this wired world is vastly different from what it used to be. Cobrapost editor Aniruddha Bahal writes about how journalism has changed over time, from postcard complaints to internet trolling, meeting sources in parking lots and using apps and being highly competitive versus collaborative.
Robyn Vinter, founder of a UK-based investigative news website for working-class millennials and people outside the “London bubble,” says she made a conscious choice not to try and make a “big profit” from it. “We’re not trying to be millionaires,” says Vinter.“We’re trying to do investigative journalism, and you can’t really do both, I don’t think.”
Earlier this year, Botswana’s INK Centre for Investigative Journalism tracked down a dossier which detailed the heinous crimes of Gukurahundi — a series of massacres of civilians carried out by the Zimbabwe National Army in the 1980s — which had been kept under lock and key for decades. It was the first time the names of the deceased and blow-by-blow accounts of how the executions were carried out were made available to the public. INK’s Ntibinyane Ntibinyane writes for GIJN on how they did it.
When Clare Rewcastle Brown founded the Sarawak Report in 2010, it was designed to highlight issues affecting indigenous communities in Malaysia, but it soon became instrumental in breaking what the US attorney-general has described as the worst form of kleptocracy in history — the 1MDB scandal involving the plundering of state funds allegedly by Malaysia’s then prime minister and his associates.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 19 to 25 finds society’s most urgent concerns in the textual data of a long-standing @dearabby column, a kerfuffle over @The Economist’s regional inequality graph, dangerous pit toilets in Africa highlighted by @SECTION27news and a gift of sorts from @politico, who open sourced their elections data management system.
Dear Friends: GIJN supports investigative journalists by providing cutting-edge resources, world-class training, access to data and documents, and by linking together the world’s best journalists through cross-border networks. Our Help Desk has responded to over 6,000 requests for assistance since 2012, with a record number this year. We’re helping journalists go after corruption and abuses of power in 140 countries. Won’t you help us continue helping journalists around the world?
With the cost of investigative journalism untenable for too many struggling newsrooms, how are they able to play the role of watchdogs and hold local public officials accountable? New models, replicating global collaborations like the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, may be the answer. Marthe Rubio, the editor of GIJN in French, spoke with editors heading these initiatives in France and the UK.
Non-partisan advocacy organization Issue One spent a year combing through thousands of financial filings over a six-year period to figure out where the money for campaign advertisements in the USA was coming from and who it was going to. They ultimately compiled a database that outlined the top 15 “dark money groups” — organizations that receive millions of dollars of donations from companies and businesses to fund campaign ads.
Reporter Feng Xin tells GIJN about the challenges Chinese journalists face with open records, and about her ongoing John S Knight Journalism Fellowship research to find some answers.
Breaking the Cambridge Analytica scandal has reinvigorated features journalist Carole Cadwalladr’s belief in journalism and how important it is. She talks with Jacob Phillips about Facebook, social media and the future of investigative journalism.
As collaborative journalism becomes a common practice across the media industry, news outlets may need clear documentation to guide their projects. Drafting a memorandum of understanding between collaborating partners can help get everyone on the same page. Stefanie Murray, from the Center for Cooperative Media, gathered six MOU template examples as a guide.
How do freelancers carry out a yearlong investigation when they only get paid at the end? Investigative reporter Samantha Sunne has a tiered approach to keep you from spending precious time and resources.
It’s not difficult to figure out if your story is understandable — if your grandmother can’t understand it, you have failed. At this summer’s MezhyhiryaFest, the annual investigative journalism festival in Kyiv, the OCCRP’s Ilya Lozovsky offered up some tips to help investigative journalists tell better stories. GIJN’s Olga Simanovych pulled them together.
Winners of the Javier Valdez Latin American Award for Investigative Journalism were honored during the 2018 Latin American Conference of Investigative Journalism (Colpin), which was held from November 8 – 11 in Bogota, Colombia.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 5 to November 11 finds employment problems in the UK from @FinancialTimes, Polish data counter-narratives with @gazeta_wyborcza, cool geospatial analysis toys from @Uber, plus the launches of new data labs with @AlterEco_, data articles with @fstalph and @eborgesrey and data newsletters with @voydorg_en.
A wave of misinformation is flooding the region, much of it courtesy of agencies backed by the Russian government. Olga Yurkova, co-founder of StopFake, writes for GIJN about how Ukrainian civil society is taking the fake news epidemic head on — with a little help from their (Western) friends.
The Global Reporting Centre has launched an ambitious project investigating labor abuse, environmental impact and corruption in global commerce. Here’s the Centre’s Peter W Klein on how Hidden Costs will bring together award-winning journalists, scholars and major media organizations — including the New York Times, PBS Frontline, the Toronto Star, Smithsonian Channel, NBC News, DigitalGlobe and Google News Labs — to undertake investigative-reporting projects.
There is one thing everyone in the journalism funding ecosystem can agree on — a free press and informed public is crucial in this age of disinformation. When the media, and truth itself, is under growing attack, philanthropic foundations and individuals are stepping up to the plate — from funding efforts to boost news literacy to building centers for investigative reporting.
A suspect in the brutal rape and murder of a Bulgarian journalist has been apprehended. But questions remain about whether Viktoria Marinova’s coverage of a procurement scandal was the real reason for her killing.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from October 29 to November 4 finds Google search voting predictions from @datavized, hurricane maps reimagined by @_KarenHao, and interactive commuter data from @WDR in Germany.
When it comes to doing investigations using online tools, there is no one tool that will answer all of your questions. Instead you’ll most likely need to build slowly towards the answer using a jumble of jigsaw pieces — a name here, a connection there. The good news is that there are dozens of tools that can be used to find the pieces to your puzzle. GIJN’s Alastair Otter has pulled together tools that can be used to help build a profile of someone — or their business.
Over the past two years, words like “bots,” “botnets” and “trolls” have entered mainstream conversations about social networks and their impact on democracies. Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab laid out some of the working definitions and their methodologies to help identify, expose and explain disinformation online.
Over the past twelve years, close to 1,010 journalists have been killed for reporting the news and bringing information to the public. On average, this constitutes one death every four days. In nine out of ten cases the killers go unpunished.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from October 22 to 28 finds @NateSilver538 talking about election forecasting, @BBCNews highlighting the prevalence of fast food outlets in the UK, @washingtonpost comparing how tough it is for Americans to vote by state, and @business and @HowWeGetToNext on battling for fresh air in India and Europe.
