The ever-evolving threats to media freedom and independence worldwide is challenging journalism to redefine itself and find ways to survive. Open Society Foundations’ Maria Teresa Ronderos talks about how journalism needs to reinvent itself and maintain its relevance in today’s society.
As the Chinese Communist Party tightens its grip on the news media, investigative journalism has suffered a heavy toll, disappearing from China’s newsrooms. But the recent outpouring of #MeToo reporting in China has signaled the emergence of a new genre of investigative journalism. One that is marked by a wave of user-generated content, with professional journalists serving as aggregators and fact-checkers, in addition to performing traditional reporting tasks such as deep reporting and writing.
Your newsletter mailing list is made up of real people who have allowed you into some of the most prime real estate in the world: their inbox, and this privilege should not be abused. Splice Newsroom offers their tips to offer your subscribers quality content.
Economist Jonathan Schwabish created a handy data visualization cheatsheet with straightforward key principles to adhere to when creating data visualizations. Remember: avoid 3D, make labels easy to read and try small multiples.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from Sept 3 to 9 finds @FiveThirtyEight attacked by the green-eyed monster with their equivalent of Bloomberg’s “Jealousy List,” @daswasfehlt breaks down Austria’s export of arms, @GoogleAI announces the beta launch of Google Datasets Search, and @SZ documents how climate change is wreaking havoc on temperatures in Germany but boosting ice-cream sales.
Beyond the moral and social benefits of unveiling corruption and injustice, investigative reporting is actually good business. Need proof? Here’s a pocket-guide to five investigations that have brought millions back into the pockets of the people.
The winners of the Eighth National Investigative Journalism Awards, organised by Venezuela’s Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, highlight the relevance and importance of collaborative journalism. By building transregional teams, Venezuelan reporters were able to investigate issues that the Venezuelan state tries to hide.
Some people say journalists are “godless.” But ProPublica’s Marshall Allen, who spent five years in full-time Christian ministry, believes his faith has made him a better reporter. Here’s how his Bible teachings are consistent with the basis of the journalistic profession — telling the truth, without bias.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from Aug 27 to Sept 2 finds @nytclimate personalizing climate change, @npr fact-checking the US Education Department’s school shooting data, @dwnews calculating the cost of travel to the environment, and @junkcharts dissecting the strengths of Thailand cave rescue data visualizations.
Customer, profits, monetize. These are just some of the words that make journalists cringe because they sound so dirty when associated with our ethically-produced investigative journalism. But university professor James Breiner argues that journalists and the media need to add these words to their vocabulary without feeling squeamish.
In this month’s Investigative Toolbox, GIJN’s Alastair Otter delves into how to share sensitive documents with OnionShare, mine Twitter with Treeverse and FollowerWonk and monitor website updates with Versionista and VisualPing.
For five years, about 100 people processed 10,236 datasets from 592 sources and documented 353,531 facts for the Memory and Conflict Observatory, a project that seeks to document the violent events that occurred during the Colombian war. The results can be summarized into a shocking number: 262,197 fatalities over 60 years. Sociologist Andrés Fernando Suárez led the team, and this is what he learned.
Data journalism is booming in Latin America, particularly in Argentina. La Nación data journalist Carolina Ávila, who led the team that won the best use of data in a breaking news story category in the 2018 Data Journalism Awards, shares their secret to success — an interdisciplinary team, creativity and ability to turn around stories quickly.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from Aug 20 to 26 finds @Numerama analyzing the representation of women in @netflix series and finds it lacking, @AJEnglish creating an interactive explainer on how 2 million Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca every year, @FT readers brainstorming air pollution solutions for London, and @Bastamag digging into data of @Airbnb — a cash cow for home renters.
It has been more than six months since the murder of Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova. The Czech Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Pavla Holcova, who had been working with Kuciak on an investigation, lists several worrying ways that the police have botched the investigation of the couple’s murders.
Investigations take more time and effort than the average story — and can still leave you flat. Samantha Sunne rounded up some tools for GIJN which will help journalists around the world tease out investigative topics, find sources and keep track of that endlessly growing list of notes, sources and documents.
Research at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy show that email and SEO are critical to audience development and monetization in single-subject newsrooms. They offer some tips of how to improve and adapt these old-school web strategies to local newsrooms.
If you host your investigative documentary or journalism video on YouTube, check out this useful graphic on YouTube SEO statistics created by tech enthusiast Saksham Kumar. Knowing the ranking factors that YouTube takes into account could give you ideas on how to optimize your video to reach the largest audience it can.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from Aug 13 to 19 finds @puddingviz proving that women’s pockets are inferior to men’s once and for all, @vizzuality pondering the impact cartographers have on our understanding of the world by presenting nocturnal activity in daytime maps, @InfoTimes_ discovering the bots behind the political debate in Egypt and @hnrklndbrg’s visualizations on everything from loner jobs to knife emergency room visits.
The #MeToo wave has emboldened Chinese journalists to start covering rampant sexual abuse. GIJN China has rounded up three incidents out of Chinese universities which are on the frontlines of #MeToo reporting in China.
Famed Malaysian political cartoonist Zunar will keynote the 3rd Asian Investigative Journalism Conference this October 6 in Seoul, South Korea. A cartoonist since 1973, Zunar (Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque) has attracted international attention for his sharp satirical humor and coverage of corruption and abuse of power.
GIJN is excited to offer one-on-one mentoring on data journalism and sustainable journalism practices at the upcoming Asian Investigative Journalism Conference in Seoul this October 5-7. These special sessions are in addition to our regular panels and workshops, and are designed to give personalized feedback and advice on the challenges you and your organization face.
At least 59 Twitter accounts that belong to journalists and media outlets, with a combined following of six million, have been censored in Turkey. Their crime? Doing journalism.
There are different ways fake news sites fake us out. In GIJN’s latest tutorial, Olga Yurkova, co-founder of the Ukrainian fact-checking project StopFake, runs through the six main techniques used and offers up some simple tools to vet them.
Following editorials in some 350 newspapers across the United States Thursday calling for an end to attacks on the press by President Donald Trump, the US Senate unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming the vital and indispensable role of the free press.
Join journalists across the US who are asking the public to stand up for their rights to free speech and an open government. While the effort started as a campaign by the Boston Globe to ask the President of the United States to stop attacking the news media, Donald Trump’s attacks on the press aren’t ultimately about the press. It’s about the people.
