From the Pandora Papers to massive “laundromat” exposes, we are witnessing the era of massive leaks exposing financial corruption. But how do you go from a leaked thumb drive to a global exposé of shadowy money? Three of the best sleuths at tracking businesses and investments hidden around the world — who were all part of the Pandora Papers team — offered lessons at GIJC21.
In the 1990’s when Brazilian investigative journalist Kátia Brasil visited an Indigenous territory in the Amazon biome, the forest was “lush” and intact. But illegal gold mining has led to a surge of outsiders entering the area, and the results have been devastating. Two investigative teams, at Amazônia Real and Repórter Brasil, decided it was time to dig into this secretive industry, to find out who is behind the gold mining that is leaving a toxic scar across the region.
Fundamentally, journalists and scholars do similar work – diving into documents, crunching numbers, conducting interviews. But their timeframes, and their measures of success, can be quite different. The Global Reporting Centre tries to bridge that gap, both by funding such collaborations and serving as an ambassador between two very different cultures.
If you run a local news organization that’s trying to figure out reader or corporate funding, this post can help you get started. In it, Jay Allred sets out ten tips for engaging with your supporters, setting out how the Richland Source, a nationally-recognized online community news organization in Ohio, raised $250,000 to fund local journalism.
In a recent series, New York Times reporter Kevin Roose explored how one Harvard-educated woman was radicalized online by tracking the conspiracy theories and memes she shares. In this Q&A, Roose explains how the story came together.
No law enforcement agency announced any criminal investigation into the attempted murder of Russia’s leading opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, after he was poisoned with a chemical weapon in Russia last year. Instead, investigative journalists stepped forward. In a GIJN webinar, journalists from Bellingcat and Russia’s The Insider explained how, and why, they used black market data to help expose the true culprits behind that attack.
In 2020, journalism students at Roosevelt University in Chicago embarked on a project to highlight the lives of 51 women who were murdered over the course of 17 years in the US city. Dorian Geiger of Oxygen detailed the project, and the growing effort to revive dignity and justice for neglected victims.
Community news co-op advocates see the new model they’re shaping as having a high chance for success in places where existing approaches to digital sites might struggle or fail, including in many news deserts. The Banyan Project’s Tom Stites writes about how news co-ops work, pointing out the pros and cons of the model.
WhatsApp’s popularity in Latin America and Africa presents an opportunity for emerging, digital-first titles and smaller newsrooms. Laura Oliver explains how newspapers and startups from Zimbabwe to Brazil and South Africa are using the platform in innovative ways to share their stories.
Despite its overt political objectives, the research section of FBK — an anti-corruption nonprofit founded by Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny — has emerged as a potent investigative team that recently attracted 110 million YouTube views for a video that exposed massive corruption at a Black Sea palace. FBK’s head of investigations told GIJN about the methods the team uses for these investigations, and what professional journalists can learn from their approach.
How did a crack South African investigative team, on the country’s biggest and richest newspaper, go horribly wrong? A new book by Anton Harber does a deep dive into the best and worst of the country’s journalism.
A joint investigation by a historian and a journalist revealed that a number of US universities were beneficiaries from land expropriated from Indigenous communities. The authors, Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, reveal what tools helped them uncover the story. They built a geodatabase and traced the money to find out where the land had come from and how much was paid for it.
In South Sudan, conflict and government repression make it difficult to do on-the-ground reporting, so a team of journalists designed a mobile phone survey to gather data on forced displacement and destruction across the country. Carolyn Thompson explains why their award-winning investigation may offer lessons to others working in repressive environments or facing movement restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.
An Australian documentary team used user-generated footage to create a film about Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of China’s COVID-19 outbreak. They used clips filmed on mobile phones that showed people with the virus being dragged into vans by police, and bodies left on the street and on hospital floors, using different tools to verify the material.
The New York Times’ Privacy Project highlighted the alarmingly unregulated activity of location data companies collecting data from millions of smartphone users. As the coronavirus pandemic sheds further light on the uses and misuses of location tracking, here’s a deeper look at the project that visualized phones being tracked around the US, from the Pentagon and the White House to the streets of San Francisco.
As coronavirus sweeps through communities around the world, the Membership Puzzle Project has shared examples from newsrooms around the world on how they have quickly adapted pillars of their membership programs and memberful routines to respond to the realities of this crisis.
Governments around the world, some which have sent workers home, are announcing interruptions in responding to freedom of information requests. Journalists are being told to expect delays in more than a dozen countries. But press freedom advocates warn that countries are taking big steps backward just when the free flow of information is most needed. GIJN’s Toby McIntosh rounds up some of the nations which have been affected.
Journalists around the world are investigating many angles of the coronavirus pandemic. GIJN has collected some of the best reporting to date, hoping these 50 examples from 17 countries will inspire even more investigative journalism.
In “Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian’s Playbook,” The GroundTruth Project chronicles seven leaders whose instincts and inclinations herald a brand of populist nationalism that, if history is a guide, can lead to authoritarian government. From Brazil to Italy and the US, these global leaders seem to share common “plays,” including weaponizing fear, undermining institutions and targeting outsiders. GroundTruth fellows offer tips for journalists covering this rising authoritarianism.
Following the major corruption investigation “Azerbaijani Laundromat,” Paul Radu, co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, was sued for libel in the United Kingdom by an Azerbaijani politician. Radu explains what he learned while fighting the case, which ended in a favorable settlement.
Italy’s first center for investigative reporting was created in 2012 with very little resources. Since then it has become a well-established player in the Italian media landscape. The group has grappled with financial challenges, threats, and intimidation, but have big plans for the future. Michele Barbero profiled Investigative Reporting Project Italy for GIJN.
Crowdfunding has become very popular in the Czech Republic, where it is often used to help launch independent media outlets or to get money to finance individual projects and cover specific topics.
In Kenya, the NGOs Transparency International and Fojo Media Institute have paired up to train budding investigative journalists and offer them reporting grants. GIJN’s Rowan Philp reports.
Initially founded by the UN, The New Humanitarian became independent five years ago and is stepping up its investigative work into the multi-billion dollar aid industry. Rowan Philp profiles the organization working to hold the humanitarian sector to account.
The Pangolin Reports brought together more than 40 journalists in 14 countries to investigate the illegal trade in pangolins, a harmless ant-eating mammal which is close to extinction. This is what they learned about collaborative journalism.
Around the world, millions of people seem to be tuning serious journalism out, as the fallout from misinformation, fatigue, and rival information sources overwhelm audience attention. But in three developing countries, large new audiences are now tuning in – to watch investigative reporting teams compete in Pop Idol-style reality shows.
The Membership Puzzle project went around the world to identify “memberful” routines that incorporate community members’ knowledge and produce value for news organizations. Here is what they found.
Investigating a big story can create an abundance of leads — sometimes, more than one journalist or even one newsroom can use. Here’s how Reveal created its Reporting Networks to share those leads with local journalists across the United States.
