Stories
News & Analysis
YanukovychLeaks: After The Ousting, A Festival
It’s been three months since ex-president Viktor Yanukovych fled in the dead of night, after a last, desperate attempt to cover his tracks by destroying documents. It’s not going to be that easy, Mr. President. For the past three years, Ukraine’s “Journalists Day” has been commemorated with an anti-censorship rally in front of his former Mezhyhirya residence. This year, the sprawling compound itself has been hacked. From June 6-8, the Mezhyhirya Festival on investigative journalism, digital activism, and leaks will celebrate a new era of freedom of expression with those who were on site to help usher it in.
News & Analysis
Danish Journos To Appeal Fines for Exposing Superbug Spread
Two Danish journalists, Kjeld Hansen and Nils Mulvad, have been found guilty of violating that country’s Data Protection Act for releasing a story on the spread of pig-to-human infection. They have been fined 2.500 Danish kroner (about US$450) each. But the two say they’ve now decided to try to appeal part of the verdict. “We want the court to accept that what we have been publishing on the web since end of October 2010 is in the line with Danish law,” said Mulvad.
GIJN Votes To Register, Create 15-Member Global Board
GIJN members worldwide have voted overwhelmingly to make the Global Investigative Journalism Network a registered nonprofit in the United States, and to restructure its board to ensure geographic representation from six regions. Until now, GIJN has not been registered in any country. “This a great validation of how far we have come since 2003,” said GIJN co-founder Brant Houston. “Once again, we have moved to another stage in GIJN with close to unanimous agreement.”
News & Analysis
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” — NR14 To Convene in Hamburg
Data Journalism Methodology Research
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for May 13-23), including items from Open News, IJNet, and the Tow Center, among others.
Data Journalism
Tips & Tricks from DataHarvest
News & Analysis
Trial of Danish Journalists Reveals Deaths Tied to MRSA “Super Bug”
Three people have died in Denmark due to infection from drug-resistant “super-bug” bacteria from pigs. None of the deceased themselves had been in contact with the animals. Data on the three deaths emerged in testimony in the City Court of Aarhus, Denmark, on Tuesday, in the trial of Danish journalists Kjeld Hansen and Nils Mulvad. The two journalists are being prosecuted for revealing farms in which the bacteria is spreading. Mulvad is a co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and both work for GIJN-member Investigative Reporting Denmark.
News & Analysis
Investigative Highlights from the Perugia Journalism Festival
Imagine a charming Italian town packed with journalists, data geeks, and students. Everywhere you go you run into old colleagues, someone you follow on Twitter, or your next partner in crime. Now add 225 sessions in beautiful century-old venues, 540 speakers from around the world, and 230 young volunteers ready to help. That about sums up the 8th International Journalism Festival in Perugia. Didn’t make it? Don’t worry, here are some highlights compiled by GIJN, including panels and tips on investigating crime, data techniques, social media, and crowdfunding. (Photo: GIJN members in Perugia from IRPI, ICIJ, OCCRP, VVOJ.)
News & Analysis
Global Press Freedom Drops to Lowest Level in a Decade
Data Journalism
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for April 23-30), including items from the Tow Center and The Upshot, among others.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Investigating with Drones, Stone Tablets, and LinkedIn
This video was taken by a drone and then posted on a popular web portal in China. It provides an aerial view of the luxurious home of the son of Zhou Yongkang, the country’s security chief. There’s not much commentary here, just tracking shots of a white, two-story mansion built in the traditional style. But the real evidence showing corruption in the Zhou family wasn’t dug up by drones. Instead, it was names etched on tombstones in a village in China’s Jiangsu Province that allowed reporters to find the corruption trail.
Case Studies
How Three Independent News Sites Survived their First Five Years
Launching a news publication online is the easy part. Paying the bills and surviving for several years is the hard part. Three of those who have evolved and survived for at least five years are La Silla Vacia, a political website in Colombia, Homicide Watch, a news and data platform in three U.S. cities, and Texas Tribune, a news site focused on Texas civic life.
News & Analysis
Crowdfunding: Alternative Finance Builds Alternative Journalism
Greg Palast’s approach to investigative journalism can be summed up in one phrase: Stand up for the underdogs, and take on the fatcats. His hard-hitting reports on corporations like ExxonMobil, politicians like Bush, and shadowy institutions like vulture funds stem from an impulse to challenge those players with the power to bend the rules to their private advantage. That’s why functioning democracies need people like Palast.
Data Journalism
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for April 10-16), including items from Heap Data Blog, Visualizing Advocacy, and Data Driven Journalism, among others.
News & Analysis
South African Awards Showcase Impressive Investigations
Despite a tough environment for investigative reporting, South Africa’s muckrakers are turning out some of the world’s best journalism year after year. Here are the finalists and winner of the just announced Taco Kuiper Awards, that country’s highest prize for investigative journalism. In the awards presentation, Wits University Journalism Professor Anton Harber talked about the extraordinary range of reports submitted, from corrupt officials and crooks to rhino horn smuggling, bad doctors, botched circumcisions, and lion hunting.
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for April 1-9), including items from Morgenpost, the Global Editors Network, and Data Driven Journalism, among others.
GIJN Welcomes New Members from Argentina, Korea, S. Africa
GIJN is proud to welcome eight new members to the Global Investigative Journalism Network. The group includes respected journalism organizations in Argentina, Korea and South Africa, nonprofits focused on environmental and hate speech issues, and a start-up in France determined to spread investigative reporting across the Francophone world. This brings GIJN’s membership to 98 organizations in 44 countries. Please join us in extending a warm welcome to GIJN’s new members.
News & Analysis
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for March 20-March 27), including items from Al Jazzera, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) Data, The Guardian, and Quartz, among others.
Aiming for the Stars: Teaching Investigative Journalism
This paper was presented during the professor’s track at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in October 2013 in Rio De Janeiro. For more on educators and investigative reporting, see the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium. This paper outlines an approach to teaching investigative journalism that produces publishable stories within an approximately four –month period. It is based on a five-step method that has been developed over the past few years on a journalism programme for graduate students.
Data Journalism
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for March 13-March 19), including items from The Guardian, Databootcamp, the University of Zurich, and New York Public Radio, among others.
News & Analysis
The Future of Media Is Mobile
After years of predictions that this year would be the year of mobile, finally it has arrived. So here are some numbers that should prompt strategizing and action by digital media publishers. What small and large digital publishers ought to learn from these figures is that the public is moving so quickly to mobile consumption of news and social sharing that they need to take action.
Data Journalism
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for March 6-March 12), including items from Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Quartz, OpenNews, and the European Journalism Center, among others.
News & Analysis
Spurring Cross-Border Collaboration on Journalism Investigations in Latin America
More and more, Latin American journalism is thriving in the digital space. Investigative journalism platforms online are joining forces, data journalism bootcamps are taking off and there are new accelerators looking to fund innovative news projects. “In today’s world, journalists spend more time in the virtual world than in the paper stacks,” said Carlos Eduardo Huertas, director of Connectas, a nonprofit which supports transnational journalism.
News & Analysis
Ukraine: Amid Attacks, Crimea Center Returns, New Sites Archived
We have several reports on Ukraine today. First, some good news: GIJN’s member in Crimea, the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism, is back in its office after vigilantes seized it on March 2. Spurred by the attack, GIJN worked with the Internet Archive to back up its site, and now we’ve helped preserve seven more independent media sites in Ukraine. And then the bad news: attacks continue on the media there, chronicled in a harrowing list of incidents compiled by the Crimean Center.
Data Journalism Methodology
Using Twitter to Find People at the Scene of a Breaking Story
As news stories break, journalists find themselves wanting to speak to members of the public. They could have witnessed an incident or may have been affected by an event. Their views count and they enhance our reports with a human angle. There are many ways to locate ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, but we don’t always know how our approaches will be received, or indeed if our messages to them will be read at all. This is where Twitter comes into its own.
Data Journalism
Top Ten #ddj: The Week’s Most Popular Data Journalism Links
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for February 27-March 5), including items from #NICAR14, #HybLab, Data Driven Journalism, and TechCrunch, among others.