The figures for Canada’s Jewish population dropped by half in five years. But nothing happened to this Jewish population. Rather, this is a perfect example of how careful we must be about data collection methods.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 18 to 24 finds a collection of beautiful news graphics by Megan Jaegerman curated by statistician @EdwardTufte, @tagesanzeiger’s quiz testing readers’ level of populist leanings, a new collaborative fact-checking effort by the name of @FactcheckEU, and @briromer’s interesting piece on maps that break strict geography rules.
Keeping track of research is often the most important, but most overlooked component of online investigations, as is the ability to verify the material that you have already found. In this month’s edition of the GIJN Toolbox, we look at tools for keeping real-time records of online research, some tools for verifying videos and examples of how they can be used, as well as a search engine that offers a number of different ways to view search results.
There are no silver bullets, no hard-and-fast rules, no magic answers to running a membership-driven news organization. It takes a lot of effort, coordination and putting members at the core of everything. Media consultant Tim Griggs shares 10 essential ingredients for making it work.
Particularly for media organizations committed to engaging those people “formerly known as the audience,” campaigns are a great way to connect with and build a meaningful relationship with communities, writes The Bristol Cable co-founder Adam Cantwell-Corn.
More and more power in the hands of President Aleksandar Vučić, mainstream press too friendly with power, growing difficulties for independent journalism. This is what Serbia’s media looks like today, according to Stevan Dojčinović, the editor-in-chief of the country’s KRIK investigative group.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 11 to March 17 finds @davduf’s award-winning exposé of Yellow Vest injuries in France, @theboysmithy making music out of the yield curve, and @alisonkilling on mapping two fictional migrants’ journeys to Europe.
GIJN invited data scientists and experts who have been focusing on data journalism in China for years to select the most noteworthy data news of 2018. Here’s what they told us.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network has opened the submissions for the Global Shining Light Award, a unique award which honors investigative journalism in a developing or transitioning country, done under threat, duress, or in the direst of conditions. Top winners will receive an honorary plaque, US$2,000, and a trip to the 2019 Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Hamburg to accept the award in front of hundreds of their colleagues from around the world.
There are two ways to use machine learning in journalism: as part of investigative reporting, or as a day-to-day tool to make journalists’ lives easier. But the journalism industry is still scratching the surface when it comes to machine learning and deep learning.
The reporters behind French TV show Cash Investigation know a thing or two about producing investigative journalism for television: Over the past six years, their show has become a major player in France’s journalism landscape by tackling complex topics and making them understandable to a wide audience. GIJN’s French Editor Marthe Rubio sat down with editor-in-chief Emmanuel Gagnier, who shared tips on how to produce investigative reports for TV.
After nine years and over 60,000 requests, MuckRock — the Massachusetts-based news site that specializes in using the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — has been witness to some pretty impressive efforts to keep public information from the public. In the spirit of Sunshine Week, they compiled some of the weirdest, wildest and downright hilarious redactions they’ve received since launching in 2010.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 4 to 10 finds several interesting tools and feature releases: @FinancialTimes’ chartmaking tool, @datavized’s data sonification tool and a new feature on @Microsoft’s Excel app that converts printed tables into editable spreadsheets, as well as @alice_corona’s discussion of building 3D data experiences, and @alyssafowers coining the term “hedgehog maps.”
A new report highlights the obstacles to survival for media startups in the Global South, and checks in on the progress of two dozen of them to see how they’ve fared over the past three years. It includes advice from some of these outlets’ editors for those thinking of launching their own startups. A recurring theme: Before you do anything else, secure a couple years’ worth of funding.
In Hungary, nonprofit news site Átlátszó has hired a full-time data team to create a wide range of data visualizations and data-driven stories, notably on corruption. Amanda Loviza spoke to the team’s leader Attila Bátorfy about his plans to raise the bar for data journalism in Hungary.
Funding by private foundations is filling gaps in mainstream news coverage, especially in areas like investigative, international and local journalism. However, researchers have found that this funding is inadvertently shaping the boundaries of international nonprofit journalism.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 25 to March 3 finds a @nytimes profile of its much admired data editor @amandacox; a flu tracker by @morgenpost; and a double dose of skepticism in @amandabee’s roundup of bad data interpretations and @albertocairo’s “How Charts Lie” book.
Quiztime is a Twitter game beloved by journalists and other online sleuths who play it to hone their geolocation skills. Every day, one of the quizmasters tweets a mysterious image, and participants try to figure out where in the world it was taken by examining the minutest of clues.
For the 50th anniversary of the riots that rocked Washington, DC after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Washington Post mapped the extent of the rioting throughout the city thanks to data compiled from declassified Secret Service reports and archival city planning documents.
For over 50 years, the Central Intelligence Agency kept a tasty secret: a translated copy of the Soviet Army’s 1948 “Manual for the Cook-Instructor of the Ground Forces in Peacetime,” complete with borscht recipes.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 18 to 24 finds a fun @FinancialTimes quiz that tests your ability to read charts, the creation of a @DataVizSociety to foster engagement in the data visualization community and data viz designer @fedfragapane’s analysis of Human Rights Protection data from 1950 to 2014.
As VICE weathers through cutbacks, VICE Arabia is betting on investigative journalism to set it apart from the competition in Arabic-speaking countries. Its team’s first big scoop exposed a smuggling network that exhumed corpses to sell them to medical students, who needed them for their studies. VICE Arabia’s senior editor tells GIJN how they uncovered the story.
When Washington, DC-based journalist Scilla Alecci began investigating a story that would later become part of the Implant Files, she hit a brick wall: Hospitals in India wouldn’t answer her phone calls. So she took the advice of an Indian colleague and booked a flight over. Together, they started knocking on doors all over the country, leading them to unexpected discoveries.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network, Netzwerk Recherche and Interlink Academy are delighted to be offering, with the help of our sponsors, more than 200 fellowships to attend the premier international gathering of investigative and data journalists this year. The 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference will be held in Hamburg, Germany from September 26 to 29, and will feature over a hundred exciting panels, workshops, and networking sessions.
After a landmark New Jersey supreme court ruling made police use-of-force reports fully available to the public, NJ Advance Media decided to dig in. They fought tooth and nail to get their hands on the reports and create the United States’ most comprehensive statewide database on this issue.
The Global Investigative Journalism Conference is the world’s largest international gathering of investigative and data journalists. Called “The World Expo of Muckraking,” the conferences have brought together over 7,000 of the globe’s most enterprising people in media since 2001. Held only once every two years, the conferences are widely credited with playing a key role in the rapid global expansion of investigative and data journalism. #GIJC19 — scheduled for this September 26-29 in Hamburg, Germany — will be our 11th conference. We expect over a thousand journalists from 130 countries.
