Gaming and the news have a history, for decades they have been used to increase engagement and reach younger audiences. Here are some tips for getting started with gamification in your next investigation.
Clark Merrefield, from The Journalist’s Resource, shares seven tips on how local journalists can better investigate global trade and its impact on their communities.
The vast majority of people who own properties are not engaged in any misconduct or possible criminal behavior. But land deals or real estate purchases made with inexplicable funding sources can be a telltale sign of corruption.
When the Myanmar military started conducting airstrikes on its citizens, researchers at Amnesty International began a forensic investigation into the supply chain, using satellite imagery to find out how aviation fuel was getting into the country, and who was supplying it.
It’s increasingly common for criminals to operate across borders. So investigative reporters also need to know how to identify and investigate people whose names use different alphabets, are formed by unfamiliar conventions, or carry unexpected cultural signals. Read these tips from the OCCRP on best practices for investigating names from outside the English-speaking world.
To get a better sense of the investigative journalism landscape on Substack, GIJN spoke with watchdog reporters who use the platform to publish original investigations and who are not part of a larger news or media organization.
Impact experts say there are several ways to help direct the attention of change-makers — as well as other media — to your key findings, and even nudge them to action.
At the 2023 NICAR conference, GIJN talked with several data journalism experts and learned 10 simple data journalism errors to avoid that could ruin your investigation.
These new reporting tools and apps, which recently debuted at two Bellingcat Hackathons, can help journalists easily archive videos, locate satellite imagery, and track people via online reviews.
There are different tools reporters can use to make video and audio files searchable, they should be an essential part of any investigative journalist’s toolkit.
When news outlets report that new research studies prove something, they’re almost certainly wrong. They find evidence — sometimes, extraordinarily strong evidence. It’s important journalists understand that science is an ongoing process of collecting and interrogating evidence, with each new discovery building on or raising questions about earlier discoveries.
Pavla Holcová is an investigative journalist and founder of the Czech Centre for Investigative Journalism, an independent outlet that does cross-border investigations on organized crime and its impact on the Czech Republic (Czechia) and Slovakia.
Academic research is a crucial tool for investigating societal problems and holding the powerful accountable. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Neil Bedi, criminologist Rachel Lovell, and Denise-Marie Ordway of The Journalist’s Resource share practical advice on using academic research in investigative journalism.
In a new book on undercover reporting, Australian journalism professors Andrea Carson and Denis Muller examine whether deception is ever an acceptable method for journalists to use.
In Flourish’s recent webinar on effective elections and polling visualization, data journalist Mafe Callejón shared essential tips for building an interactive map from election results.
How reporters at OCCRP took a neighborhood Telegram chat from Bucha, Ukraine and turned it into an investigation of life under Russian occupation.
Bellingcat’s Foeke Postma offers tips and tools for using new technology and online resources to investigate old photographs.
In 2021, nonprofit journalism site CORRECTIV.Lokal set out to investigate the impact of restricted access to abortion on the health and well-being of pregnant people in Germany. As the recent US Supreme Court ruling shows, ongoing changes to abortion rights and legislation affect millions of people around the world and make this a crucial topic for investigative journalists.
To investigate what the Russian invasion looked like to TikTok users in Russia and Ukraine, and how the content available differed from one side of the border to the other, a team of journalists from the Norwegian broadcasting company NRK set out to investigate the social networking site’s algorithms and how a user’s location provides differing digital narratives about the war.
The Miami Herald’s award-winning House of Cards investigation of the Champlain Towers South collapse used a dynamic, multimedia scrollytelling format to take readers inside the causes of a deadly construction tragedy.
Mediapart’s co-director of investigations, self-taught journalist Fabrice Arfi, offers his tips and best practices for educating oneself, cultivating sources, confronting targets fairly, and avoiding legal trouble.
From respecting that different journalists have different styles of reporting to using voices from the field to tell the story, and from keeping it simple with clear language to just ‘getting started,’ here are tips from two experienced reporters for the write-up stage of an investigation.
Megha Rajagopalan has reported from over 23 countries in Asia and the Middle East, on stories ranging from the North Korean nuclear crisis to the peace process in Afghanistan. Her team’s investigation into prison camps in Xinjiang, China won a Pulitzer Prize. In this podcast, she discusses how she got into investigative journalism and gives her tips for speaking to vulnerable sources.
Open source tools like the Yemeni Archive have allowed investigative journalists to track the impact of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in the Yemen civil war as well as identify Western allies’ role in possible war crimes or abuses.
How Greenpeace’s investigative site, Unearthed, used satellite imagery and database mapping to reveal hundreds of fires on environmentally protected land in the English moors – including dozens that could be illegal.
Reporters at the OCCRP are used to cataloging shell companies and trawling through bank records in search of assets. But when they received a tip-off about show jumping horses linked to the oligarchs, they decided to dig into the subject as part of the Russian Asset Tracker project.
GIJN Spanish associate editor Mariel Lozada offers a behind-the-scenes look at a reporting collaboration that uncovers the vast scale of illegal mining and illicit smuggling in Venezuela’s Amazon region.
To get a behind-the-scenes look at The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the civilian death toll of US airstrikes, GIJN interviewed two key members of the reporting team: Christoph Koettl, a member of the Times’ visual Investigations team, and the series’ lead reporter, Azmat Khan.
