There are two ways to use machine learning in journalism: as part of investigative reporting, or as a day-to-day tool to make journalists’ lives easier. But the journalism industry is still scratching the surface when it comes to machine learning and deep learning.
The reporters behind French TV show Cash Investigation know a thing or two about producing investigative journalism for television: Over the past six years, their show has become a major player in France’s journalism landscape by tackling complex topics and making them understandable to a wide audience. GIJN’s French Editor Marthe Rubio sat down with editor-in-chief Emmanuel Gagnier, who shared tips on how to produce investigative reports for TV.
After nine years and over 60,000 requests, MuckRock — the Massachusetts-based news site that specializes in using the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — has been witness to some pretty impressive efforts to keep public information from the public. In the spirit of Sunshine Week, they compiled some of the weirdest, wildest and downright hilarious redactions they’ve received since launching in 2010.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from March 4 to 10 finds several interesting tools and feature releases: @FinancialTimes’ chartmaking tool, @datavized’s data sonification tool and a new feature on @Microsoft’s Excel app that converts printed tables into editable spreadsheets, as well as @alice_corona’s discussion of building 3D data experiences, and @alyssafowers coining the term “hedgehog maps.”
A new report highlights the obstacles to survival for media startups in the Global South, and checks in on the progress of two dozen of them to see how they’ve fared over the past three years. It includes advice from some of these outlets’ editors for those thinking of launching their own startups. A recurring theme: Before you do anything else, secure a couple years’ worth of funding.
In Hungary, nonprofit news site Átlátszó has hired a full-time data team to create a wide range of data visualizations and data-driven stories, notably on corruption. Amanda Loviza spoke to the team’s leader Attila Bátorfy about his plans to raise the bar for data journalism in Hungary.
Funding by private foundations is filling gaps in mainstream news coverage, especially in areas like investigative, international and local journalism. However, researchers have found that this funding is inadvertently shaping the boundaries of international nonprofit journalism.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 25 to March 3 finds a @nytimes profile of its much admired data editor @amandacox; a flu tracker by @morgenpost; and a double dose of skepticism in @amandabee’s roundup of bad data interpretations and @albertocairo’s “How Charts Lie” book.
Quiztime is a Twitter game beloved by journalists and other online sleuths who play it to hone their geolocation skills. Every day, one of the quizmasters tweets a mysterious image, and participants try to figure out where in the world it was taken by examining the minutest of clues.
For the 50th anniversary of the riots that rocked Washington, DC after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the Washington Post mapped the extent of the rioting throughout the city thanks to data compiled from declassified Secret Service reports and archival city planning documents.
For over 50 years, the Central Intelligence Agency kept a tasty secret: a translated copy of the Soviet Army’s 1948 “Manual for the Cook-Instructor of the Ground Forces in Peacetime,” complete with borscht recipes.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 18 to 24 finds a fun @FinancialTimes quiz that tests your ability to read charts, the creation of a @DataVizSociety to foster engagement in the data visualization community and data viz designer @fedfragapane’s analysis of Human Rights Protection data from 1950 to 2014.
As VICE weathers through cutbacks, VICE Arabia is betting on investigative journalism to set it apart from the competition in Arabic-speaking countries. Its team’s first big scoop exposed a smuggling network that exhumed corpses to sell them to medical students, who needed them for their studies. VICE Arabia’s senior editor tells GIJN how they uncovered the story.
When Washington, DC-based journalist Scilla Alecci began investigating a story that would later become part of the Implant Files, she hit a brick wall: Hospitals in India wouldn’t answer her phone calls. So she took the advice of an Indian colleague and booked a flight over. Together, they started knocking on doors all over the country, leading them to unexpected discoveries.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network, Netzwerk Recherche and Interlink Academy are delighted to be offering, with the help of our sponsors, more than 200 fellowships to attend the premier international gathering of investigative and data journalists this year. The 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference will be held in Hamburg, Germany from September 26 to 29, and will feature over a hundred exciting panels, workshops, and networking sessions.
After a landmark New Jersey supreme court ruling made police use-of-force reports fully available to the public, NJ Advance Media decided to dig in. They fought tooth and nail to get their hands on the reports and create the United States’ most comprehensive statewide database on this issue.
The Global Investigative Journalism Conference is the world’s largest international gathering of investigative and data journalists. Called “The World Expo of Muckraking,” the conferences have brought together over 7,000 of the globe’s most enterprising people in media since 2001. Held only once every two years, the conferences are widely credited with playing a key role in the rapid global expansion of investigative and data journalism. #GIJC19 — scheduled for this September 26-29 in Hamburg, Germany — will be our 11th conference. We expect over a thousand journalists from 130 countries.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is delighted to welcome four new member organizations based in four countries, including a nonprofit investigative journalism site in the United States, a foundation that supports and produces investigative data journalism in Italy, a foundation supporting investigative journalism education in Turkey and a group from Mozambique that is focused on journalism training and media development.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 11 to 18 finds learning opportunities from @utknightcenter and @WorldResources, while @Tagesspiegel and @correctiv_org ask who owns Berlin’s housing and @LacePadilla examines what makes a good visualization.
The Brazilian version of The Intercept is carving a solid spot for itself in the country’s journalism landscape. With a focus on human rights abuses, police violence and politics, The Intercept Brasil’s investigations have attracted a young audience and an unexpected amount of donations, its executive editor tells GIJN.
Newsrooms are increasingly embracing newsletters as they seek to engage and grow their audiences. But there’s more than one way to tackle the form. Here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at what goes into creating newsletters for nonprofit newsrooms that explore single-subject issues, like education or gun violence.
Media outlets’ communities have a lot to offer — and often, they would like to help. Here are 25 jobs that community members can do to aid newsrooms and examples of how to best include them.
It is unfortunately becoming easier and easier to harass journalists online through the use of technology such as bots, with the intent to intimidate and silence truth-tellers. These attacks can be relentless and if left unchecked, can be a real threat to journalists’ mental health and reputation. To deal with these online “pests,” TrollBusters created an infographic that offers clear steps on how to deal with various types of cyberviolence ranging from doxing to sexually explicit photos.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from February 4 to 10 finds exciting releases with a document analysis tool by @ICIJorg and an audio-driven visualization tool by @f_l_o_u_r_i_s_h, while @kloopnews highlights domestic labour imbalance in Kyrgyzstan and @davidottewell emphasizes that data journalism is not just for nerds in a corner.
A reader asked ProPublica Illinois how the media organization finds new story ideas. Reporter Jodi S. Cohen, who was just as curious as the reader, spoke to her colleagues to find out where they got their inspiration. From fleshing out ideas found in other colleagues’ stories to digging into data anomalies, and even paying extra attention to an idle truck parked at an abandoned gas station, their answers show that there are a myriad of ways in which inspiration for your next big story could strike.
The 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference, scheduled for this September 26-29 in Hamburg, Germany, will feature an academic research track. Journalism professors and researchers worldwide are invited to submit research paper abstracts highlighting trends, challenges, teaching methodologies, new developments and best practices in investigative and data journalism. Abstracts are due April 8, 2019.
