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News & Analysis
Spotlight Movie: A “Hard Sell” but $88m in Global Sales
Since premiering in the United States in late 2015, the movie Spotlight has earned US$88 million in revenue, split almost evenly between U.S. ($45 million) and international sales ($43 million). Along the way, the movie has earned two Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Screenplay) and given journalists around the world a needed boost. But winning Academy Awards didn’t lift Spotlight too high. The movie is the second lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in the last 38 years.
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 April 2-11: Behind the Panama Papers Investigation (@ICIJorg, @SZ); Best #ddj on taxes (@OKFN); Spies in the Sky (@BuzzFeed); EU Data Journalism Manifesto (@medium); World scientific collaboration (@storybench); & more.
News & Analysis
Panama Papers Showcase Power of a Global Movement
The ongoing and spectacular investigation “Panama Papers” represents the culmination of a significant shift in the way journalism is now practiced. The project also represents 40 years of work done by groups of investigative reporters to bring the profession into the 21st Century. “The Panama Papers showcases not so much technological power but the power of the global investigative reporting movement,” says Sheila Coronel of the Columbia Journalism School.
News & Analysis
Against the Odds, Investigative Journalism Persists in Middle East
In the past year, a group of Arab journalists has been working secretly in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria, and Yemen as part of a global network of investigative reporters mining the so called “Panama Papers.” They found that some Arab strongmen and their business partners are linked to offshore companies and bank accounts. What’s astonishing about this story is not that Arab dictators are going offshore to hide their wealth and evade sanctions. It’s that a community of Arab journalists is continuing to do investigative reporting in a region where there is increasingly little tolerance for accountability of any kind.
Election of GIJN Board — 2016
This June, the membership of the Global Investigative Journalism Network will vote to elect members of the GIJN Board of Directors. The board consists of 15 members. Of these, seven seats are now up for election — all for a period of two years.
Data Journalism Methodology
Behind the Panama Papers: A Q&A with ICIJ Director Gerard Ryle
“Hello,” wrote the anonymous source to a German newspaper, “this is John Doe. Interested in data?” Thus began what would soon become an international financial investigation into what are being called the Panama Papers—an investigation so massive that even whistleblower Edward Snowden, on Twitter, called it the “biggest leak in the history of data journalism.”
News & Analysis
Are Panama Papers Really a Campaign Against Privacy?
We do agree with Ramon Fonseca about one thing: that “Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar.” But that’s where our commonality with co-founder of disgraced Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca ends. This scandal isn’t about privacy. If anything, it’s about the need for transparency about how the powerful wield their power.
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 March 20- April 1: ddj without borders (@Maid_Marianne); time-lapses basics (@vimeo); Berlin bikelanes (@morgenpost); data ebook (@jonathanstray); North Korea missiles (@bbc); death penalty stats (@guardian); and more.
Spotlight’s Robinson To Keynote Asia IJ Conference
GIJN and its partners are excited to officially open registration for Uncovering Asia — the second Asian Investigative Journalism Conference, to be held in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Sept. 23-25. Our keynote speaker will be Walter “Robby” Robinson, who led the Boston Globe Spotlight team’s Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Robinson was played by actor Michael Keaton in the movie Spotlight.
News & Analysis
Engagement or Reach: How To Best Find Our Audience
At a recent meeting of the Institute for Nonprofit News – for my sins, I now sit on INN’s board – we learned an interesting statistic: About half the organization’s members have a strategy to drive readers to their own sites/destinations, and the other half count on distributing their content via other platforms. Does it matter how we reach readers? And should we care?
Reporting Tools & Tips
How To Get People To Pay for News
A Round-up of Recent Debates about Community Support and Culture Change in Newsrooms. A study released earlier this month suggested that 40% of Americans would buy digital newspaper subscriptions if they were presented with a persuasive argument. It is worth spending a minute unpacking what that “persuasive argument” might look like.
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 March 14-21: undercovered stories (@JigsawTeam); NICAR links (@MacDiva); Madrid conference (@JPDatos); podcasts (@carlapedret); GEN Awards (@GENinnovate); R for annotations (@hrbrmstr); German elections (@zeitonline).
News & Analysis
South Africa Awards Highlight Fraud, Waste, and Abuse
We gather for the 10th time to pay tribute to journalists who spend their time digging and probing – and often risking their lives for little reward – to expose wrongdoing. Investigative reporters have been derisively called “muckrakers”, but we embrace that label to say that we are proud of those who play such an important role in our society by digging around in the dirt to hold the powerful to account.
News & Analysis
GIJN Statement: Attacks on Dojčinović and KRIK Must End
The Global Investigative Journalism Network, an association of 128 organizations in 58 countries, deplores recent attacks on the character and work of Stevan Dojčinović and the KRIK investigative reporting center in Serbia. We call upon the government of Serbia to take all measures to protect the security of Mr. Dojčinović and his staff, and to respect their freedom to conduct independent journalism.
News & Analysis
Investigative Journalism & Foreign Aid: A Huge Return on Investment
It’s not unusual for investigative reporting to lead to huge fines. Exposés of foreign bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion have led to billions of dollars recovered by governments worldwide. What is shocking about these numbers is how they compare to the paucity of foreign aid to investigative journalists where it is most needed — in developing and transitioning countries.
News & Analysis
Angola: From Being Bullied to Dictator’s Nightmare
Writing has been my life’s passion and my curse too. In my teens, I was bullied for being an avid reader and for wanting to express my opinions as informed by my readings. I vividly remember being taunted with the idea that “too much reading will bring you madness, and disgrace.”
Data Journalism
The Best Five Podcasts About Data Journalism
Podcast are a great way to find out stories and to be entertained. However, have you ever thought about using them to learn data journalism? In this list, I have collected some of the best podcast about data. Some are specifically about data journalism, whereas others approach data from an innovative perspective.
Data Journalism
Teaching Data Journalism: A Survey & Model Curricula
Data journalism is thriving worldwide, but is American journalism education keeping up? Funded by the Knight Foundation, our research team set out to survey and analyze the state of data journalism education in the U.S. today. The results are being published and available online as a free report, Teaching Data and Computational Journalism, that provides model curricula for a range of computational and data journalism courses.
News & Analysis
Sometimes Dog Bites Man Really Is the Story – And We Keep Missing it
There are things that happen with such regularity and predictability that journalists have simply ceased to recognize their news value – not least if those things are least likely to happen to the people most likely to be journalists. That much of what we have come to accept as commonplace has dulled our curiosity to why so much of what is commonplace is unacceptable; that given the prevailing and escalating inequalities and inequities, we simply do not occupy the same worlds we portend to cover – even when those worlds are right on our door step.
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 Mar. 3-8: designing lists (@edwardtufte); Zurich streets (@NZZ); Lesbos journey (@washingtonpost); Google Maps storytelling (@GoogleNewsLab); German bridges (@SPIEGELONLINE); data science guides (@KirkDBorne); and more.
Reporting Tools & Tips
How To Save Online Evidence And Why It Matters: Part Two
In part one of this blog I discussed the need for journalists to save evidence they find online and some of the techniques for recording that information. In part two, I’ll focus on some of the issues journalists face when it comes to saving information from social media and mobile devices.
News & Analysis
Why Crowdfunding Can Keep Journalism True to its Promise
This is not just about getting the money; it is about creating a faithful community of readers. In a way, they are searching for the lost group of loyal subscribers to traditional newspapers who would call the newsroom in times of crisis as if journalists were family.
GIJN Boosts Broadcast Journalists in Thailand
GIJN lent a hand to the Thai Broadcast Journalists Association last month, helping train 60 journalists in the fine art of muckraking in Thailand. “The ending workshop was quite amazing,” Hanson says. “They worked with an intensity that was really impressive, developing story ideas they had generated the first day… “I believe some of these stories will be published!”
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 Feb. 23-Mar. 1: earthdata search (@ddjournalism); Hyblab #ddj projects (@hyblab); Is data journalism for everybody?; a city transformation in 3D (@LeTelegramme); Spanish data presentation (@cabralens); & more.
News & Analysis
Spotlight Wins Oscars for Best Picture, Screenplay
The movie Spotlight, based on the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting into pedophilia inside the Catholic Church, won best picture and best screenplay at the 2016 Academy Awards late Sunday. “We would not be here today without the heroic efforts of our reporters,” declared producer Blye Pagon Faust as she accepted the award. “Not only do they effect global change, but they absolutely show us the necessity of investigative journalism.”
