Stories

News & Analysis
Why I Think Slovak Journalist Jan Kuciak’s Murder Will Never Be Investigated
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.

Reporting Tools & Tips
10 Investigative Tools You Probably Haven’t Heard Of
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.

Reporting Tools & Tips
How Local News Outlets Can Build an Online Audience
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.

Reporting Tools & Tips
Document of the Day: YouTube Video SEO Tips
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.

Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Egyptian Bots, Pocket Inequality, Loner Jobs and Knife Emergencies
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.

News & Analysis
Investigative Journalists Propel #MeToo Reporting at China’s Universities
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.

Political Cartoonist Zunar to Keynote IJAsia18 in Seoul
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.

One-on-One Mentoring at IJAsia18: Data Journalism and Sustainable Journalism
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.

News & Analysis
How Turkey Silences Journalists Online, One Removal Request at a Time
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.

Reporting Tools & Tips
6 Fake News Techniques and Simple Tools to Vet Them
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.


News & Analysis
Document of the Day: US Senate Resolution on Freedom of the Press
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.

News & Analysis
INN Joins 350 US Papers in Call for End to Trump Harassment of 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.

Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Faking Climate Change Data and in WEB Du Bois’ Black Americ
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from Aug 6 to 12 finds @sciam profiling a new color scale for the color blind, @EDudinskij’s fun dissertation on dataviz in science fiction movies, @morgenpost using satellite imagery to show the consequences of droughts, and @gregladen and Grant Foster calling bull on a climate change denier’s flawed graphs.

Case Studies
Meet the Man Who Filed 1,400 FOI Requests to Prove Data Acquisition Isn’t Terrorism
For the last three years Gavin Chait has been fighting — and winning — multiple freedom of information cases to unlock data on vacant properties. Here are the lengths he took to disprove the City of London’s excuse for not publishing information on unoccupied commercial properties.

News & Analysis
State Aid For Journalism: Should Governments Provide Subsidies to News Media?
Can a government foot the bill for journalists to carry out their watchdog function, without undue government control or intervention in the editorial process? Paul Clemens Murschetz lists three criteria to ensure state aid for journalism is successful and effective.

Data Journalism
America’s Cultural Landscape, Germany’s Record Summer, Spain’s Immigration Boom, Google’s Data Search
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 30 to Aug 5 finds practical advice from @junkcharts for conference presenters to showcase their graphics, @Google making data in data journalism pieces more searchable, @funkeinteraktiv displaying the ways Germany is breaking records this summer, @eldiarioes examining Spain’s immigration boom and author Colin Woodard breaking down America’s regional cultures in The New York Times.

Case Studies
What a Failed Media Startup Can Teach Us About Involving Readers in Reporting
Canada’s OpenFile had an elegant concept. They would ask readers to tell them what they thought was important and make editorial decisions around that. But the platform’s initial success couldn’t be sustained as it struggled to make money and maintain the flow of reader-suggested stories. Here’s what the OpenFile journalists learned about community journalism along the way.

Case Studies
How The Conversation Reuses Archival Coverage
It’s easier than ever for news organizations to update, promote and reuse stories from their archives. Here are some lessons and strategies from The Conversation on how best to revive and repost your archival content to fit the news cycle.

News & Analysis
A New Collaboration Sets a Higher Bar for Working with Whistleblowers
A unique collaboration between five international investigative teams and recently-formed Signals Network is offering unprecedented protection to whistleblowers, and has received the backing of famed NSA exposer Edward Snowden. Their first project? A broad call on the misuse of big data. A GIJN report by Rowan Philp.

News & Analysis
Online Harassment of Journalists: RSF’s 25 Recommendations
A new report by Reporters Without Borders is helping to shed light on the latest danger for journalists – threats and insults on social networks that are designed to intimidate them into silence. The organization has put forth these 25 recommendations for governments, international organizations, online platforms, media companies and advertisers to respond to these virulent online campaigns.

Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Dam Disaster in Laos, Global Star Gazing, Why We Love Pie Charts
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 23 to 29 finds @NadiehBremer visualizing beautiful constellations imagined by different cultures, @mslima diving deep into why we love pie charts, @leigh_tami18 explaining the various methods of joining datasets and the Reuters Graphic’s team visualization of the dam disaster in Laos.

Reporting Tools & Tips
August’s Top Tools for Investigative Journalists
The past few years have seen an explosion of digital tools that can be used to enhance journalism research and reporting. In this new monthly feature GIJN’s IT Coordinator Alastair Otter takes a look at some of the best and latest tools and techniques for enhancing investigative and data-driven journalism.

Case Studies
Journalists Collaborate in Oregon on Mountain of Data on High School Concussions
John Schrag had known for a while about an unexamined pool of data that could shed new light on the issue of concussions in high school sports. The executive editor of a newspaper in Oregon, his first instincts were to keep the story in-house and garner all the glory, but he quickly realized the only way the story would see the light of day was through collaboration.

One Man’s Mission to Spread Data Journalism Across Southeast Asia
Despite increasing state-control, violence against journalists and other threats to press freedom, Southeast Asian journalists are increasingly delving into data journalism and other forms of innovative storytelling and creating a greater impact than ever before — thanks in no small part to Malaysian data journalist Kuang Keng Kuek Ser. GIJN in Chinese editor Siran Liang talked ho him about the rise of data journalism in the region.

They Won’t Back Down: Kazakhstan’s Feisty Newspaper
Journalism has never been easy in Kazakhstan. The outspoken newspaper Uralskaya Nedelya has rarely known a moment’s peace. But it is usually the lawmaker’s pen and the judge’s gavel that are the main enemies of the independent press.

Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Nike’s Vaporflys, Trump’s Trade War, FastCharts, Datapasta
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 16 to 22 finds @UpshotNYT confirming Nike’s claim that their Vaporflys really do give runners an advantage, @FinancialTimes visualizes Trump’s escalating trade war, Britain’s digital divide and introduces their new charting tool and @MilesMcBain makes some data journalists very happy by creating Datapasta.