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Stories

2792 posts

Reporting Tools & Tips

The 10 Most-Used Tools in Today’s Newsrooms

In the very early days of building Sonr*, we talked to newsrooms all over New York City and London to get a sense of what tools journalists are currently using to get the job done. Some of these newsrooms were more traditional than others, but we found that there was a core set of digital tools that most writers and editors couldn’t get through the day without. Let us know what you think, or if this list is missing anything in the comments!

Data Journalism Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips

New Tools Open Up Virtual Reality to Journalists

When Gustavo Cerati, a legendary Argentinian musician and songwriter, was asked to share his best advice for new musicians, he refused—saying instead that “experiences are not transferable.” You may agree or may not with his statement, but if you’ve ever worn an Oculus Rift or a similar virtual reality (VR) headset, you’ll know we are getting closer and closer to transferable experiences.

Data Journalism

Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links

What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are top links for July 7-11: Our World in Data (@MaxCRoser); narrating networks (@JWYG); sentences off the grid (@edwardtufte); FiveThirtyEight’s ddj workflow with R (@FiveThirtyEight); Netzwerk Recherche conference video (@spreerunde); & more.

Case Studies

“Keep Moving Forward” — Ideas for African Media

For the image on her new Twitter account, Congolese journalist Nanythe Talani features part of a quote by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “If you can’t run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”

Data Journalism

Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links

What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are top links for June 23-30: Brexit data (@webk1d & @timesredbox); Aleph data search tool (@pudo); spatial data (@enjalot); digital startups & human rights (@dw_akademie); humanizing data and Mexico’s missing women (@gijn).

News & Analysis

China’s Environmental Journalists Shine Despite Dark Times

Over 100 outstanding Chinese journalists have received prizes in the six years that our awards have been handed out. During this time we have seen for ourselves the decline of the news industry – but also seen many fine journalists bucking that trend by carrying on the baton of journalistic ideals and professionalism. Journalism has never been an easy job, and those who possess the ideals and the strength of character of a good journalist will flourish even in the hard times.

Reporting Tools & Tips

A Poor Journalist’s Text-Mining Toolkit

How can you search and analyze collections of documents on your own computers with simple tools? At DataHarvest, Robert Gebeloff and I ran a workshop to answer that question. As people were seemed interested, here’s a write-up of the two key tools we worked with: Apache Tika for content extraction and regular expressions in Sublime Text as an advanced search tool.

Data Journalism

Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links

What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are top links for June 10-22: Voting habits of Americans (@nytimes); Eurocup players (@br_data); FT dataviz guide (@digiday); stats for journalists (@ddjournalism); #ddj awards recap (@smfrogers); nursing homes in Germany (@source); & more.

Data Journalism

Humanizing Data: Using Numbers AND People

With the growing relevance and popularity of data journalism, it may be easy to prioritize numbers over people, and spend our time emphasizing the data through graphics, maps, charts, and other visual products. But sometimes the faces and names behind the data get lost. Fortunately, we have some guiding lights to keep us on the path of good journalism. Consider these highlights from the panel Humanizing Numbers at IRE16…

Reporting Tools & Tips

From Research to Publication: A Snap Look at Tips from IRE16

When it’s time to start a new investigation, journalists prepare themselves in different ways: from doing the research to pitching the story to building the narrative. It’s not about a single formula, but about integrating different resources and strategies. Here, we present a selection of the tips presented at the 2016 conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors (#IRE16), useful for starting and developing investigations.

News & Analysis

Sheila Coronel’s Speech Gives Inspiration at IRE16

The awards luncheon at the annual IRE conference featured a moving keynote address by Columbia University’s Sheila Coronel. Her speech focused on the contagious and empowering spirit of collaboration taking hold among investigative journalists worldwide.

GIJN Board Members Elected – Welcome to Jung, Nazakat

The results from last week’s election of GIJN board candidates are in: electronic voting by GIJN members elected two new board members: Syed Nazakat, representing Asia/Pacific, and Eva Jung, representing Europe. In all, seven seats were up for election, each for a two-year term. Five other board members were re-elected: Anton Harber (Wits University Investigative Journalism Programme), Carlos Eduardo Huertas (Connectas), Oleg Khomenok (Internews), Bruce Shapiro (Dart Center), and Margo Smit (VVOJ).

News & Analysis

Coronel: A Golden Age of Global Muckraking at Hand

Ten years ago, when I first moved to New York and gave my first lecture at the Columbia Journalism School, I told students that I believe we are at the dawn of a Golden Age of global muckraking. They were a great class, but they didn’t believe me. But look at where we are now.

Data Journalism

Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links

What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are top links for May 31-June 9: EU Swings Right (@NYtimes); #ddj newsrooms (@niemanlab); German commutes (@zeitonline); French police violence (@BuzzFeedFrance); Dataharvest HackDay (#thesponge.eu); Ethnic America (@WashingtonPost); & more.

News & Analysis

New Journalism Ecosystem Thrives Worldwide

“In the immortal words of Sir Isaac Newton more than three centuries ago, ‘To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.’” In October 2010, Executive Editor Charles Lewis wrote these words for the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s first New Journalism Ecosystem research on nonprofit news organizations in the United States. Those same words summarize the events that led to the launch of the Hungarian nonprofit center for investigative journalism, Direkt36, and many other similar centers around the world.

GIJN Welcomes 10 New Members from 10 Countries

The Global Investigative Journalism Network is delighted to welcome to 10 new member organizations. We are particularly pleased to welcome for the first time groups from Ghana, Venezuela, Malaysia, Liberia, and New Zealand. Among the new members are award-winning reporting centers in Serbia and South Africa, online publishers in Malaysia and Venezuela, an African cross-border reporting network, and training groups based in Liberia, Germany, Mexico, and the Netherlands.

Data Journalism Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips

My Data Is Dirty! Basic Spreadsheet Cleaning Functions

In an extract from his book Finding Stories with Spreadsheets Paul Bradshaw explains how to use basic cleaning functions in spreadsheets to make it easier to combine data, including a case study where the same functions were used to speed up a research process for a story.

Reporting Tools & Tips

Better Recording, Better Transcribing: A Digital Toolbox for Bringing Home the Perfect Interview

Before the emergence of digital tools, recording and (especially) transcribing an interview was a tedious affair. The little microcassette tapes were of dubious reliability—and yes, I once had one fail on me during a crucial and contentious encounter. Transcribing was worse, as you’d sit there constantly hitting the “play” and “rewind” buttons, an imprecise process that risked damage to the tape.

Data Journalism

Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links

What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are top links for May 23-30: a racist algorithm (@ProPublica); Spain’s female politicians (@elespanolcom); German anti-refugee violence (@Julian_Moe); US election (@ddjournalism); satellite imagery (@webk1d); and more.

Case Studies

Behind Journalism’s Top Crowdfunding Campaign

A simple WordPress blog named #NoHaceFaltaPapel didn’t exist a year ago. Now it’s a publishing company whose El Español is responsible for the largest crowdfunding campaign for journalism to date. Previously at the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and now working in New York City for Univision Noticias, María Ramírez and her husband Eduardo Suárez launched the blog last April to explore media innovation at the International Symposium of Online Journalists.

Data Journalism

Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links

What’s the data-driven journalism crowd tweeting? Here are the top links for May 13-24: Best dataviz of the year (@Gizmodo); 85 tools for digital journos (@Journalism2ls); missing women in Mexico (@Univ_Data); how to analyze big leaks (@M_Mandalka); news graphics collection (@marijerr); & more.

News & Analysis

Khadija Ismayilova Freed from Azerbaijan Prison

Journalist Khadija Ismayilova was set free after her final appeal hearing today at the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan two days before her 40th birthday. Ismayilova, an award-winning reporter who exposed the corruption of the ruling Aliyev family, has been in prison in Baku since her arrest on Dec. 5, 2014. “There was no crime,” Ismayilova told the press upon her release. “President Aliyev and his clique decided to get rid of any criticism against them.”

Reporting Tools & Tips

Follow the Money: How Open Data and Investigative Journalism Can Beat Corruption

Alongside the advantages available for criminals of operating on a global scale, making it harder to track them down, there are also disadvantages that the clever journalist or law enforcement official can exploit to expose them. How do we do this? Firstly, through data: more data means more transparency, provided the quality of information is there and supported by tools that allow proper analysis. Secondly, by journalists using advanced techniques.

Member Profiles

Hungarian Journalists Build New Site After Controversy

In 2014, Hungarian investigative journalist András Pethő wrote an exposé about a series of expensive overseas business trips taken by the chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the popular website Origo.hu. Within days of the story’s publication, Origo’s editor in chief, Gergo Saling, resigned – apparently due to political pressure on Origo’s parent company, Magyar Telecom. Pethő and much of the rest of the site’s news staff quit soon afterwards in solidarity. The walkout led to much scrutiny of Origo and Hungary’s press freedom climate, both in Hungary and internationally.

Data Journalism Reporting Tools & Tips

OjoPúblico Launches Data Journalism Guide

With the aim of contributing to the promotion of data-based investigations and asserting its vision of journalism as an essential service to democracy, OjoPúblico has published “La navaja suiza del reportero. Herramientas de investigación en la era de los datos masivos” (“The Swiss Army Knife Journalist: Digital Research Tools in the Era of Big Data”), a resource for Hispanic reporters who want to become familiar with the world of data journalism and, above all, to understand its meaning and relevance in Latin America and the world.

Member Profiles

Tempo Magazine: 45 Years of Investigative Reporting in Indonesia

It was 6 March 1971 when the first edition of the Tempo was published. This year marks their forty-fifth anniversary and over that time the Indonesian weekly magazine has gone through a lot, including a temporary closure under the Soeharto regime. In this interview, Wahyu Dhyatmika, investigative journalist at Tempo, talks about the evolution of the magazine and how they are trying to adapt to the digital age, considering the development of news apps and the creation of specific mobile content.