Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, was recently named one of Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers for 2019. The New Arab recently talked to Higgins about what motivated him to start the website and the role of developing technology in countering disinformation and fake news.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from January 14 to 20 finds a @FinancialTimes exposé of possible electoral fraud in Congo, @sxywu’s beautiful visualization of interaction data between a museum and the public, and @maartenzam’s the ultimate data visualization list to end all lists.
In tribute to the media groups and individual journalists who continue to pursue truth in one of the world’s most difficult regions, GIJN’s Arabic Editor Majdoleen Hassan rounded up some of the best investigative reports published last year in the Middle East and North Africa.
Many in the journalistic profession fear Artificial Intelligence will leave them without a job. But AI could become the savior of the trade, making it possible to better cover the increasingly complex, globalized and information-rich world we live in. Open Society Foundations’ María Teresa Ronderos writes about the ways some of the world’s newsrooms are using it now.
In an era of digital media disruption, Africa Confidential has avoided the complicated revenue tools many news media have been forced to experiment with, like soft or metered paywalls, crowdfunding, programmatic ads, blockchain systems or slashed costs and access fees. Instead, the London-based political news group has defied global trends by not only retaining its old school subscription model, but actually increasing its annual cost to a sky-high 902 British pounds. Rowan Philp writes for GIJN on AC’s secret to success.
With the global spread of data journalism, the advent of artificial intelligence and the increasing use of big data moving alongside a rapid rise of disinformation, GIJN asked data journalism experts around the world what they anticipate for 2019. Here are their thoughts on the major trends, ideas and technologies that will affect how we do our jobs.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from January 7 to 13, 2019 finds @SZ’s analysis revealing how children’s books perpetuate gender stereotypes, @A24COM mapping the hottest crime spots and times in Buenos Aires, @dw_akademie offering a data journalism fellowship opportunity, and great chances to win awards from @WorldGovSummit and @GENinnovate’s Data Journalism Awards.
Chinese journalists have broken stories this year on medical abuses, #MeToo and the environment, leading to government prosecution, consumer uproar and boycott, and disciplinary actions. Here are some of the best investigative journalism work in China in 2018, nominated by practicing Chinese journalists and media professionals, and selected by the GIJN Chinese team.
With the backlash against democracy and anti-press sentiment growing, the need for investigations around issues such as corruption and climate change continues to rise. GIJN asked the leaders of our global community about what they see happening in investigative journalism around the world in 2019. Here’s what they told us.
The 2019 Global Investigative Journalism Conference is scheduled for September 26-29 in Hamburg, Germany. Designed by journalists for journalists, GIJC19 will feature cutting-edge panels, workshops and networking sessions, ranging from cross-border collaboration and corruption tracking to advanced data analysis. Here’s an opportunity for you to propose great ideas on compelling panels, workshops and other presentations.
Paul McNally produced what was South Africa’s first investigative podcast around the story of a wrongful conviction. Here’s what he discovered while writing, producing and editing Alibi — with some advice on how you can avoid making the same mistakes.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from December 31, 2018 to Jan 6, 2019 finds experts sharing their thoughts on machine learning in journalism with @storybench, @funkeinterativ and @webk1d’s useful tool to merge datasets, @pewresearch’s overview of female under-representation in online image searches, and an analysis by @EDNNews on corpses bodies sent back to El Salvador.
Despite difficult reporting environments, journalists in sub-Saharan Africa produced some seriously impressive investigations in 2018. GIJN Africa editor Raymond Mpubani compiled a list of some of the top stories produced this year, published by outlets based in the region.
Journalists in Eastern Europe and Central Asia uncovered massive fraud, corruption and even assassination plots. GIJN’s Russian language editor, Olga Simanovych, has gathered some of 2018’s most interesting, complex, amusing and unique investigative reporting published in Russian and Ukrainian.
Here’s another fascinating look — through a recent US indictment — at the looting of Africa. This one involves alleged fraud tied to $2 billion in loans to state-owned companies in Mozambique, one of the world’s most indebted nations. Among the charges: conspiracy to violate U.S. anti-bribery law and to commit money laundering and securities fraud. Those state-owned firms are now reportedly bankrupt after defaulting on over $700 million in loan payments.
Starting today and running throughout the week for the next two months on GIJN’s YouTube channel — as well as on our main Facebook and Twitter platforms — our new, concise Tip of the Day format will feature leading experts who will share one critical insight each day, including investigative basics such as following public records or investigating with data, as well as how to better understand financial records and the latest online search strategies.
GIJN is constantly on the lookout for the best tipsheets, reporting gudies, how-to stories, and videos, then collating and integrating it into ever-growing Resource Center. Following is a curated list of the top 10 most popular resources accessed by journalists on our site in 2018.
Media startups from the Arab world have had to battle censorship, lack of funding and unstable political environments. In a roundtable hosted by GIJN in December at the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism forum in Jordan, founders of four startups shared their innovation tactics to survive and thrive, including renting out excess office space, training, events and paid newsletter subscriptions.
In September 2017, the lead producer for the BBC Internet Research & Future Services, Tristan Ferne, identified 12 different story formats used in digital news. With new formats constantly emerging, Emma-Leena Ovaskainen, a visual journalist for Finland’s biggest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, has modified the list and made her own additions.
We love indictments, and here’s one that caught our eye at GIJN: a recently unsealed document from the US Department of Justice last month, alleging that Venezuelan television mogul Raul Gorrin Belisario was part of a billion-dollar currency exchange and money laundering scheme that paid off high-level Venezuelan government officials. Belisario is no ordinary exile…
Over the last few years, data and data analysis have taken on a new quality. Data and information is now a tool for creating beautiful visuals. What used to be simple charts and scatter plots are now complex and creative pieces of data art — some beautiful enough to hang up on your wall. Visme picked a collection of the best data visualizations of 2018.
It’s been an exciting year of great content and record traffic on GIJN. What follows is a curated list we’ve put together of the top pieces published on gijn.org in 2018 — from the deep web and deep fakes to design thinking and dataviz. See you next year!
It’s been a great year for data journalism and visualizations. GIJN’s Top 10 #ddj series captured snapshots of what’s popular on Twitter among the global data journalism community for 46 weeks in 2018. For this edition, we asked NodeXL to map 2018’s most popular #ddj tweets from January 1 to December 11 and the results are in. This year’s most popular tweets include @FinancialTimes’ ever-popular Visual Vocabulary chart, @Google’s Dataset Search, @hnrklndbrg’s eclectic visualizations, and @SZ’s analysis of Germany’s parliamentarians using laughter as a debate weapon.
It’s been a big year for investigative reporters in Latin America, from unveiling high-level corruption to collaborating across countries. They’ve chased down leads on colleagues murdered at the border between Colombia and Ecuador, and covered the biggest migratory crisis in years. The reporters have demonstrated, once again, the importance of coming together to hold those in power to account — often doing it under very difficult conditions. Erika Lozano, editor of GIJN en Español, has gathered some of the best investigative stories published in Spanish during 2018.
It was a year of significant transformation in the Portuguese-speaking world. This was especially true in Brazil, where corruption scandals landed top officials in jail and propelled a far right-wing politician into the presidency. This year, Lusophone journalists not only exposed corrupt practices via innovative projects, they also revealed sexual abuse and abortion challenges. Breno Costa, GIJN’s Portuguese editor, has selected some of the best investigations from 2018 .
Despite bleak predictions, investigative journalism is thriving in Francophone countries. From Kinshasa to Paris, 2018 was high point for investigative journalism, with more collaborations than ever before. This year’s cross-border investigations have exposed corruption and fraud, while individual newsrooms have uncovered murder, war crimes and more. Marthe Rubio, GIJN’s French editor, compiled a selection of 2018’s best investigative stories from Francophone countries.
More than 450 journalists gathered at the 11th Annual Forum of the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism in Jordan earlier this month. The gathering took place just two months after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as new details of his assassination continued to surface.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from December 3 to 9 finds @BuzzFeedNews mapping wildfire prone areas across America, @dwnews dissecting the value of insurance against climate change, the release of @infobeautyaward winners, and @jschwabish teaching fourth grade kids the wonders of data visualization in fun and inventive ways.
