Global Network News — Sept. 2012

New Members in 11 Countries

GIJN is growing! Since July the Global Network has expanded by 30 percent–we now represent 60 groups in 35 countries. Our membership includes investigative reporting centers, professional associations, and grant-making bodies. Please join us in welcoming our new members:

• atlatszo.hu (Hungary), a Budapest-based online reporting center
• Baltic Centre for Investigative Journalism, a Riga-based reporting center, serving Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (UK), a London-based reporting center
• El Faro (El Salvador), an online news site based in San Salvador
• Fonds Pour Le Journalisme (Belgium), a grant-making fund serving French-speaking Belgium
• Fund for Investigative Journalism in Haiti (Haiti), a grant-making fund based in Port-au-Prince
• Investigativ.ch (Switzerland), a Zurich-based association of German-speaking Swiss investigative journalists
• Investigative Reporting Workshop (US), a reporting center based at American University in Washington, D.C.
• Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a network of 15 investigative centers and publications, based in Sarajevo, Bosnia
• RISE Project (Romania), a reporting center based in Bucharest, Romania
• Serbian Center for Investigative Journalism (CINS) (Serbia), a reporting center based in Belgrade

Interested in joining? Membership in GIJN is open to nonprofit organizations that support or engage in investigative journalism. Contact hello@gijn.org for more information. Individuals are welcome to participate in the GIJN’s Global Listserv and conferences and join us on the GIJN Facebook and Twitter communities.

Rio: Hackfest, Collaborations, and Profs

The 2013 Global Investigative Journalism Conference is expected to be the largest ever, and plans for the big summit are beginning to accelerate. Among the proposed activities: a hackfest; collaboration and networking workshops; a meeting of investigative journalism professors; a new mentoring program; and conference tracks on the environment, corruption, sports, and data.The conference combines the GIJC with two other major events: Brazil’s annual Congresso Internacional de Jornalismo Investigativo, sponsored by Abraji; and COLPIN, the Latin American investigative journalism conference, sponsored by IPYS. We are busy fundraising to bring 150 journalists from developing and transitioning countries to the conference on travel grants.

Interested in attending? Contact a GIJN member organization and tell them you want to go. We are partnering with GIJN members around the world to fundraise for the grants.

Over the Summer: Abraji’s Big Conference

Abraji, host of GIJC13 next year in Rio, hosted an impressive conference in Sao Paulo on July 12-14, attracting some 800 journalists and journalism students from nine countries. The group’s annual Congresso Internacional de Jornalismo Investigativo featured some 80 panels and workshops ranging from data journalism to sports and elections. Among those honored was TV investigative reporter Tim Lopes, whose murder in a Rio favela helped lead to Abraji’s founding in 2002. Abraji today is one of the world’s two largest national associations of investigative journalists (second only to the US-based Investigative Reporters and Editors) with 3,000 members across Brazil.

Kaplan Appointed Director of GIJN Secretariat, MOU Extended

At the last Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kiev, in October 2011, delegates approved creating a provisional secretariat to manage the GIJN, and agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding to let the new Global Center for Investigative Journalism manage the new body. In September, after a review of the Secretariat’s first six months, the GIJN’s Volunteer Group, which oversees the GIJN between conferences, unanimously agreed to extend the MOU through the Rio conference. David Kaplan, who’s been managing the effort, was also given the title of director of the provisional secretariat. “It’s an incredibly exciting time,” said Kaplan. “The GIJN has pioneered and spread investigative journalism worldwide, and by building capacity now we can have even more impact.”

TOOLBOX

• FOIA without the Lawyer: A guide to the UK’s Freedom of Information Act
• Global Casebook of Investigative Journalism: 20 stories that illustrate best practices
• FCPA Alert Summer 2012: An encyclopedic guide to US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases (PDF)

STORIES OF NOTE

• Teliasonera in Million-dollar Deal with Dictatorship, Mission: Investigate, SVT (Sweden)
• Pharmaceutical Slaves, Die Story, WRD (Germany)
• Ivory Worship, National Geographic
• The Jungle Highway, Connectas
• Skin and Bone: the Shadowy Trade in Human Body Parts, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
• Mubarak Spent 3 billion Pounds To Buy Presidential Planes, El Watan (Egypt)
• Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food, Bloomberg

CALENDAR

• October 12-15: COLPIN–Latin America Conference on Investigative Journalism, Bogota, Colombia
• October 29-31: Power Reporting–African Investigative Journalism Conference, Johannesburg, South Africa
• November 7-10: =INTERNATIONAL ANTI-CORRUPTION CONFERENCE, B=rasilia, Brazil
• November 16-17: European Investigative Journalism Conference, Antwerp, Belgium
• November 23-25: Annual Conference for Arab Investigative Journalists, Cairo, Egypt
• February 28-March 3, 2013: IRE/NICAR Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
• May 9-11: European Data Harvest Festival, Brussels, Belgium
• June 20-23, 2013: IRE Annual Conference, San Antonio, Texas, USA
• October 14-17, 2013: Global Investigative Journalism Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil