GIJN Welcomes Seven New Members from Six Countries

The Global Investigative Journalism Network is delighted to welcome seven new member organizations. We are especially pleased to welcome for the first time groups from Ireland and Malawi. Also among the new members are investigative centers from India, Ukraine, and Slovenia, a journalism fund from Ireland, and a collaborative news site that encourages filing of Freedom of Information requests in the United States.

The new groups bring GIJN’s global membership to 145 groups in 62 countries. For a full listing, please see our membership directory.

Membership in the Global Investigative Journalism Network is open to nonprofits, NGOs and educational organizations, or their equivalent, that actively work in support of investigative reporting and related data journalism. New members are approved by the GIJN Board of Directors.

Please join us in welcoming our newest members to GIJN:

Centre for Investigative Journalism Malawi is an independent group of investigative journalists established in 2013.  It is committed to promoting effective, ethical, and original reporting through disbursement of small investigative grants, mentorship, facilitating access to information resources that can enhance the quality of investigative stories, and promoting dialogue among investigative journalists within Malawi and abroad. The Centre will also organize training in investigative journalism, foreign internships, and career talks at journalism training institutions.

Mary Raftery Journalism Fund (Ireland) was established in 2012, in honor of investigative journalist Mary Raftery, who died in January 2012. Mary was a prolific journalist and wrote a column for the Irish Times between 2003 and 2007. She also produced several documentaries, including the 1999 “States of Fear” series which detailed the abuse suffered by children in reformatory and industrial schools between the 1930s and 1970s in Ireland. The aim of the fund is to promote more in-depth investigative coverage of issues and to expose injustice.

MuckRock (U.S.) is a non-profit, collaborative news site that brings together journalists, researchers, activists, and citizens to request, analyze, and share government documents, making politics more transparent and democracies more informed. The site provides a repository of hundreds of thousands of pages of original government materials, information on how to file requests, and tools to make the requesting process easier. MuckRock staff and outside contributors also use these primary source documents to create original investigative reporting and analysis, including areas such as government spending, surveillance, and public safety.

NGSCO “TOM 14” (Ukraine) was founded by a handful of investigative journalists to inform the public about corruption in Ukraine and its connection to poverty in order to reduce social tolerance of corrupt practices. TOM14 produces an investigative television program “Nashi Hroshi” (“Our Money”) which focuses on economic and public procurement, including costs and contracts, fly-by-night companies, and ties among officials and business.

Oorvani Foundation (India) is a public-funded, non-partisan, non-profit organization that funds data and analytical journalism. It started off as the Citizenmatters.in website in 2008, followed by Oorvani Media Pte. Ltd. and finally Oorvani Foundation was established, to ensure a separation of journalism from funding. The foundation, which has a stable presence in Chennai and Bangalore, has supported the creation of many data-driven investigative stories and also started a “Co-Media Lab” initiative to improve the quality of citizen and professional journalism through collaborative projects and journalism internships and workshops.

Pod črto (Slovenia) (“The Bottom Line” in English) is an independent nonprofit media outlet founded in 2014. This investigative unit focuses primarily on in-depth reporting and data journalism. Pod črto accepts no advertising; its investigative work is supported by readers and donations. The group’s work includes stories on court backlogs in Slovenia, the rights of patients with occupational diseases, access to the primary health-care system, corruption in the public sector, as well as the security issues of TETRA, the communication system used by Slovenian security services.

Stop Corruption (Ukraine) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent investigative journalism and human rights organization. It undertakes anti-corruption journalism investigations and promotes democracy reforms by revealing abuses of power and corruption and by encouraging local whistleblowers and human rights activists to participate in anti-corruption cases. They produce weekly television programs based on their investigative reports.