Reporting Tools & Tips
MoJo Workin’: Developing and Producing on a Smart Phone (Part 2)
In part two of this Mojo Workin’ column on developing and producing the story, Ivo Burum focuses on equipment, coverage and audio perspective.
Stories
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GIJN Launches French Language Social Media Channels
We’re delighted to announce that GIJN has launched a new initiative: GIJN en français. We’ll be sharing the best investigative tips and tools, groundbreaking stories, grants and fellowships, data sets and more.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Mojo Workin’: Developing And Producing on a Smart Phone (Part 1)
Mobile journalism expert Ivo Burum is back with a column on the most frustrating part of mojo — developing and producing a story. He offers tips on developing your story idea and sharpening your focus on story structure, character and shots coverage.
News & Analysis
#AllForJan: An Open Letter to Slovakia
As protests grip Slovakia in the wake of the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and harassment of his colleague Pavla Holcova, the Global Reporting Centre’s Peter W. Klein writes this open letter to the Prime Minister of Slovakia urging him to respect press freedom and the rights of Holcova and all the journalists who are doing their jobs.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Racing Snails, Presidential Gifts and Berlin’s Building Blocks
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 21 to 27 finds @nigelblue’s wildly humorous infographic book about crazy competitions across the globe, @Data_Match breaks down the list of gifts given to the president of the United States by foreign leaders and @FinancialTimes looks into the pressures Antarctica faces.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Reinventing the Rolodex: Why You Should Ask Your Members What They Know
De Correspondent has been tapping into the experience and expertise of its readers to build and research their stories. But instead of one-off engagements with their audience, they are reinventing their approach to the conventional rolodex: verifying their readers expertise and inviting them into conversations surrounding their stories.
Reporting Tools & Tips
5 Tips on Finding Open-Source Secrets in Africa — and Worldwide
There are hundreds of stories in business registries and court documents around the world just waiting for a journalist to uncover them. Emmanuel Freudenthal shares his five tips on finding open-source secrets in Africa with GIJN — helpful guidelines which can be used around the world.
Reporting Tools & Tips
What to Watch for in the Coming Wave of “Deep Fake” Videos
Deep fakes — videos which feature one person’s face on another’s body — are rapidly becoming more sophisticated. Samantha Sunne talked to some of the world’s experts on the techniques which can help you learn the weaknesses of this new phenomenon that’s got everyone talking.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Why — And How — Journalists Should Engage in the Comments Section
Journalists can increase people’s trust and create a loyal audience by engaging with their readers in the comments section. This guide by The Coral Project has tips on how journalists can best interact with their audience, deal with potential abuse and find real value in the comments.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Sex in Parliament, Peace and Press Freedom and Vanishing Global Water
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 14 to 20 finds @FinancialTimes highlighting @NASA data on high risk drought areas across the globe, @infogram juxtaposing press freedom with global peace rankings and @BBCNews showing how smuggling mobile phones is a rampant problem in English and Welsh prisons.
Hong Kong’s FactWire Startup Takes Novel Approach: No Editors
Press self-censorship in Hong Kong has been deteriorating as businessmen behind media organisations increasingly use the press as their business tool rather than for public service. After seeing the public’s disillusionment and distrust of the media grow, investigative journalist Don Ng decided to kickstart FactWire, a back-to-basics news service that focuses on long-term investigations.
Case Studies
How They Did It: Investigating the Trafficking of Girls from Nepal to the Gulf
Last year Pramod Acharya traveled to Sindhupalchok in the land-locked nation of Nepal to follow up on the region’s recovery from the devastating earthquake of 2015. That’s when he stumbled across a human trafficking ring. He wrote up what he learned about covering human trafficking in South Asia — along with some tips — for GIJN.
The Dogged Investigative Reporter on the Aging Beat
Peter Gosselin at ProPublica has a very different investigative beat: Americans 60 years and older. More specifically: age discrimination and the treatment of older workers. Read how he recently exposed such practices at IBM by leveraging on crowdsourcing.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Trump Country, Conga Lines and the Nerds in the Corner
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 7 to 13 finds @adamrpearce brilliantly illustrating the problem and causes of backed up trains along the New York subway, @Textyorgua_Eng highlights the destruction of Ukraine’s landscape due to illegal amber mining and @duc_qn analyzes which university gives you the best bang for your buck.
Reporting Tools & Tips
How Not to Win a Journalism Grant
Journalists are not usually in the frame of mind for grants. They pitch their story to an editor, the editor says “no” or “yes” and they get to work. But drafting a grant application is a somewhat complex technique. Here is a list of mistakes that tend to kill many fledgling journalistic projects before they even stand a chance.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Here are 20 Guidelines for Working with Whistleblowers. What’s Missing?
One of the central ethical tenets of professional journalism is “first, protect your sources.” But in this digital age, it is becoming more dangerous to keep your sources safe as governments are able to track reporters and their sources digitally. Here are 20 guidelines for working with whistleblowers in the digital era. What’s missing?
News & Analysis
Can Civil’s Blockchain Save Journalism?
With a $5 million funding budget, the new platform is dreamily promising a new “canvas on which journalists can paint the future of their industry.” But it isn’t clear how the blockchain-based technology will generate the cold hard cash needed to sustain the industry’s revenue-starved publications, writes Rowan Philp for GIJN.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Lying Maps, Foul Mouthed Moms and Geek Sauce
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 30 to May 6 finds @theboysmithy talking to @MarkMonmonier about the influence a cartographer can exert over a naive map reader, @OCCRP’s data visualization platform to map complex crime networks and @PostGraphics’ mapping of diversity in America’s neighborhoods.
Case Studies
Al Jazeera Analyzed 6,500 Homepage Images. Here’s What They Learned
Using image analysis tools on their own means nothing without asking the right questions. AJ Labs experimented with Google Vision API, a machine-learning technology, to analyze images used by Al Jazeera over the course of last year. They hope to integrate the technology into their newsroom in the future to make processes easier for their journalists.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Solving a Journalist’s Murder — The Making of “Killing Pavel”
In a recent training session in Kyiv, producer Matt Sarnetski and journalist Anna Babinets talked about how they created Killing Pavel, a documentary about the murder of the well-known journalist Pavel Sheremet. GIJN has rounded up the key takeaways.
Data Journalism
GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Innovative Visualization, Data Fellowships and the Dark Side
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 23 to 29 finds @thetimes’ interactive which will determine whether you will join the dark side, @albertocairo discussing precedents to innovative visualizations and @srendgen talking about the technological revolution encouraging data journalism.
News & Analysis
World Press Freedom Day — “No Democracy without Investigative Journalism”
At a time when the news media is under unprecedented attack, and the need for watchdog reporting has never been greater, we hope you will join GIJN today in marking World Press Freedom Day (#WorldPressFreedomDay). This is the 25th celebration of WPFD, but despite the years of meetings and proclamations by its sponsors UNESCO and others, conditions are getting worse, not better, for journalists around the world.
Meet the Watchdog Scientists Battling Dubious Scientific Research
Fraudulent, plagiarized or otherwise shoddy research is an increasing problem across all scientific disciplines — particularly in China — and can catch like wildfire. Australian Professor Jennifer Byrne and her French colleague Cyril Labbé, as well as projects like Retraction Watch, are fighting back.
Case Studies
How They Did It: Tracking the Copious Travels of Cameroon’s President
The full scale of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya’s jaunts abroad since he took power 35 years ago had never been calculated until now. Journalist Emmanuel Freudenthal details how he and two of his colleagues painstakingly pored over almost 4,000 newspaper pages to establish the number of days Biya had spent overseas on private trips and the amount the lavish trips cost the country.