GIJN’s Resource Center is here to help journalists expand their knowledge and skills. The Center holds more than 2,000 items in 14 languages – from tip sheets and guides to instructional videos. Use the menu on the right to navigate it or the search box below to find topics you’re interested in.
Advice on the subject of interviewing comes in many flavors — not only for investigative journalists, but for police officers, employers, lawyers, social workers, and others. What’s clear is that the interview is one of the most trusted and effective tools in the investigator’s toolbox. GIJN has prepared a sampling, mainly from journalists, but with […]
COVID-19 Update: Reporting during the pandemic poses some new risks. Here are some relevant resources. Marc Settle, a BBC Academy smartphone trainer, prepared this article: Coronavirus’ impact on mobile journalism Nico Piro, mobile journalism trainer and special correspondent at Italy’s RAI, shared lessons here: Lessons from Italy: best practices for field reporting during the coronavirus […]
Crafting Investigative Reportage Into Dramatic Narratives, by Vinod K Jose, Executive Editor of The Caravan, India’s premier magazine for narrative and investigatory journalism. This GIJC19 presentation discusses “ideation,” editorial entry points and reportorial conduct. Also see PowerPoint that includes examples. Using Story-Based Inquiry to Focus, Manage and Build was the topic at GIJC17 for Mark […]
Bellingcat’s Online Investigation Toolkit with resources on image and video verification, social media search, searching people, maps and satellites, and more. Updated 2023. GIJN’s Guide to Fact-Checking Investigative Stories by Nils Hanson (2021) GIJN’s Four Quick Ways to Verify Images on a Smartphone by Raymond Joseph. (2021) Making Stories Ironclad & Bulletproof Line-by-Line, by Nils […]
Turbulent with a chance of data: Journalism’s drone-powered futures: A guide to storytelling with UAVs, by Monika Sengul-Jones in datajournalism.com. Tips on Drone Journalism by Raffy Tima, a senior news producer and news anchor with GMA Network Manila, Philippines, as presented during GIJC17. Six Tips for Succeeding at Drone Journalism, a guide prepared by Johnny […]
Online Research Tools and Investigative Techniques by the BBC’s ace online sleuth Paul Myers has long been a starting point for online research by GIJN readers. His website, Research Clinic, is rich in research links and “study materials.” Here’s a tipsheet about finding people online that Myers presented at a 2019 GIJN webinar. And a […]
So you’ve got the interview and are ready to transcribe. Whether you’re looking to transcribe yourself, want to try out the latest transcription app, need an automated service or a freelancer to help you out, here’s an overview of 28 tools that can help you efficiently turn audio into text.
Verifying video materials should be a routine part of reporting, but knowing how to use the digital tools to verify fake content is just one part of the skill. The creative techniques behind video verification are even more important.
Journalism is by definition investigative. However, the depth and scope of possibilities to unearth and bring to light wrongdoings of public interest has increased manifold, thanks to the way the Internet has been evolving in the last decade. To be a true investigative reporter today, it is indispensable to fine-tune the old philosophy with three new practices: be Open, Systematic and Safe.
Digital self-defense is becoming an important part of the journalistic toolkit. Beyond risks to everyone’s digital lives—webcam hacking, email breaches, identity theft—people who work in newsrooms have even more at stake. Newsrooms are some of the biggest targets in the world for state-sponsored digital attacks, as well as more routine threats.
In a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all others. To those who see it, it presents the entire universe at once — an investigative reporter’s dream. Over the past six months, I’ve been working for OCCRP to produce a tool named after this mythical object. It’s based on a prototype I hacked up as part of my 2014 Knight International Journalism Fellowship, and it has now grown into a data research tool as part of the Investigative Dashboard.
Isn’t the best journalism always immersive? Whether it’s Walter Kronkite’s journalistic take on history “You are There” from the 1950s or Declan Walsh’s mobile phone reporting from Syria in June, the best journalism makes you feel like you are part of the story. You care what happens. Virtual Reality is a powerful tool in making journalism more […]
As journalists we are used to saving information. We securely store documents, keep meticulous notes, save and back up important emails on our computers. But what about the information we find online during the course of our investigations?
Data literacy is a never-ending process. Going to workshops and hands-on practice are important, but to really become acquainted with the “culture” of data literacy, you’ll have to do a lot of reading. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back: below is a curated list of 16 blogs to follow in 2016 if you want to: improve your data-visualisation skills; see the best examples of data journalism; discover the methodology behind the best data-driven projects; and pick-up some essential tips for working with data.
Time for a new collection of tools and reports. This week we’ve got a human rights database, file conversion for 208 formats, and nine new reports from research organizations, ranging from terrorism and corruption to European migration. Got a suggestion for The Research Desk? Write me at gprice@mediasourceinc.com.
It’s time for another roundup of resources and research reports that we’ve curated from around the web. Most of these selections are new on the web in the past few weeks. Several of the reports listed below are full of data including visualizations and can be thought of as reference tools for both current and future research.
The latest tools and resources from the Research Desk: new world of drones databases available, reports from the European Parliament Research Service, Top Green Companies in the World 2015, a handy free extension to download entire pages or individual files, and more.
There’s nothing like a good photographer to bring alive an investigative story. One of the worst crimes that investigative journalists commit is spending months on a great story, and then only minutes on the presentation. Working with photojournalists who know their craft (along with designers and graphic artists) can be one of the real pleasures of putting a big project together. We’re fortunate that a new handbook on using photography for investigations was just published: Investigative Photography: Supporting a Story with Pictures, by CJ Clarke, Damien Spleeters, and Juliet Ferguson.
