Here are top data journalism tweets for Apr 17-23, per our NodeXL mapping: French voting (@lamontagne_fr); music festival gender (@pitchfork); mapping US homeless (@FastCompany); Scottish fact checking (@FerretScot); Spanish voting (@Politibot). tilegrams (@bhaskar_vk); & more.
Reporters Without Borders this week released its 2017 World Press Freedom Index of 180 countries, and the news is not good. The report found media freedoms falling in democracies and that “nothing seems to be checking that fall.” Nearly two thirds (62.2%) of countries measured had deteriorated freedoms, while the number of countries where the media freedom situation was “good” or “fairly good” fell by 2.3%.
‘Tis the season of media awards with lots of great investigative journalists — and great investigative stories — getting honored for their muckraking. We’ve picked some notable winners and finalists from the European Press Prizes, the Pulitzers, and the IRE Awards. Big congratulations to the winners and finalists, who have showcased grit and determination in exposing injustices and corruption across the globe. Despite all the challenges we face, muckraking has never been in better hands.
Four years of work and 8,000 judicial rulings later, the team at Univision Data shows how in Costa Rica, a person is more likely to be convicted of a crime if they are assigned a public defense attorney than if they have a private one. Their methodology included web scraping, R and logistic regression — a statistical method common in social sciences but practically unexplored in newsrooms.
The dependence of Mexican media on official advertising, reductions in newsrooms and the search by media outlets to “fill spaces,” meant that investigative journalism is increasingly forgotten, and the little that is done is failing to create the impact it should. In order to rectify this, reporters Alexandra Xanic, Daniel Lizárraga, Ignacio Rodríguez Reyna and Marcela Turati set up Quinto Elemento Lab – to work with and mentor investigative journalists through the progress of investigations.
Here are top data journalism tweets for Apr 10-16, per our NodeXL mapping: Brittany’s posh hotels (@dataspotTLG); Flourish #dataviz tool (@FastCoDesign); US health insurance (@NPR); hexagonal Europe (@MusMekh); visual vocabulary (@ftdata); data internships (@ONS); China’s rising water (@kimmelman); & more.
It’s been a busy first quarter of 2017 for GIJN members — from picking up Pulitzer Prizes to launching crowdfunding campaigns. There have also been new projects and new collaborations forged. Here are some noteworthy splashes made by GIJN members around the world.
For Ojo Público, the search for new narratives and formats to tell a story is constant. The Peruvian investigative outlet believes in experimenting and betting on new formats to reach new audiences. With this mindset and commitment to innovation, the team has produced stories in an interactive comic format, created an award-winning database and is looking to develop news games this year.
Here are the top data journalism tweets for Apr 3-9, per our NodeXL mapping: #fakenews guide (@PublicDataLab); election bots (@d1gi); data story rules (@surendranb); China climate risk (@nytimes); UK jobs (@sole24ore); #PerugiaPledge (@dw_innovation); & more.
When faced with data journalism, journalists often say “Oh, I can’t do that, it’s too complicated” [or] “I hated math in school, I really can’t take the time to learn how to do this”. However, data expert Helena Bengtsson stresses that data journalism is not that hard, and insists that every journalist should have basic knowledge of how to sort and filter a spreadsheet, and do simple calculations.
We’re delighted to launch a new column — Mojo Workin’ — on tips and tools for mobile journalism by noted mojo expert Ivo Burum. Ivo’s workshops are a popular feature of GIJN conferences. The Australia-based journalist brings over 30 years of experience producing prime-time programing across genres. He’ll be profiling the latest techniques with investigative journalists in mind, so here’s a great chance to get your mojo workin’.
Newsrooms in Asia have traditionally worked alone, guarding their sources and tip-offs fiercely and keeping their stories and investigations in-house. However, after attending GIJN’s Asian Investigative Journalism Conferences and participating in the global Panama Papers investigation, Indonesia’s top newsweekly and leading investigative outlet Tempo have been inspired to pursue their own cross-border collaborations.
Here are the top data journalism tweets for Mar 27- Apr 2, per our NodeXL mapping: interactive graphics (@driven_by_data); ridiculous news (@twisteddoodles); Malofiej Infographics Awards (@malofiej); Germany’s radio masts (@stimmeonline); Republicans voting with Trump (@FiveThirtyEight); & more.
In a time where too many editors are perceiving investigative reporting as a luxury which they can no longer afford, South African journalists are still spending their time digging and probing to expose wrongdoing. As Suzanne Venter picked up her Taco Kuiper Award for the story on the mentally ill patient scandal, she cited “not giving up”, “putting in extra hours” and “speaking to everyone involved” as the keys to do good journalism.
Every year the world loses 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of forests, an area about the size of Greece. A critical way to stem this forest loss is to make concessions data more transparent. This information is critical as it gives journalists, civil society groups and the public the information they need to hold the government and the private sector accountable for deforestation.
The 10th Global Investigative Journalism Conference, to be held this November 16-19 in Johannesburg, South Africa, will again feature an academic research track, highlighting trends, challenges, teaching methodologies, and best practices in investigative journalism. Here is the call for papers that is going out to journalism professors worldwide.
At a time when many legacy publications and platforms are foundering financially, stakeholder-driven media are proving the business case for an advocacy-based, community audience paradigm. What drives it to work is if your organisation has a decent mission that matter to the target community and you deliver in a reliable and accessible manner. Mark Lee Hunter, Luk Van Wassenhove and Maria Besiou explore the success stories of SDMs and analyse the keys to their success.
Here are the top data journalism tweets for March 20-26, per our NodeXL mapping: record low Arctic ice (@NASA); Europe’s STEM gender issue (@MSFTnews); satellite imagery search (@ddjournalism); Western Europe terrorism (@TheEconomist); storm #dataviz (@sciam); data resources (@jschwabish); & more.
Last month, an international group of investigative journalists launched the Tax Disclosure Project – a global initiative requesting politicians in 20 countries to publicly disclose their tax returns. The project, coordinated by Finance Uncovered, aims to ensure transparency, accountability and an avoidance of wrongdoing and potential conflicts of interest among lawmakers. In this piece, Finance Uncovered co-director Nick Mathiason shares with GIJN the process of setting up this cross-border collaboration.
Open data can bring much value to China, especially with regard to government efficiency and effectiveness, data-informed decision-making, and increasing the public’s trust through greater engagement. Although there have been improvements in the quality and availability of government open data in China, data expert Yolanda Ma states that there are still many more challenges to overcome.
Too often, inexperienced data users accept the data they receive at face value. Data scientist Heather Krause cautions that data should be treated similar to a human source. Just as you’d do a background check on a human source before publishing what they told you, you need to understand your data.
The old news business model has been serving advertisers and investors at the expense of the most important people in the media equation — the public, the readers, the users. But now that digital media have broken up that arranged marriage of advertising and news content, publishers are rediscovering the importance of focusing on serving readers.
Here are the top data journalism tweets for March 13-19, per our NodeXL mapping: #NICAR17 resources (@MacDiva); Breitbart network analysis (@CJR); climate change calculator (@FT); Trump’s Budget (@washingtonpost); Berlin pickpockets (@berlinerzeitung); Caracas jobless (@CamburYMedio); & more.
De Correspondent, a Dutch member-funded journalism platform, leverages on the shared knowledge and experience of their 55,000 paying members as much as possible in their reporting. Here’s their 3-step workflow incorporating reader engagement, which helped them land their scoop on Shell.
The media, civil society, and democracy are under unprecedented duress around the world. Protecting the independent media and the public sphere presents an “epic challenge,” but there is great opportunity for philanthropy to step up and help. Bruce Sievers and Patrice Schneider detail five avenues worth pursuing in funding news media and argue that charitable donors should significantly increase their investment in the media.
Here are the top data journalism tweets for March 6-12, per our NodeXL mapping: ski resorts & climate (@SPIEGELONLINE); science reporting grants (@ddjournalism); chart chooser (Andrei Pandre); #Tapestryconf recap (@catmule); scraping MP data (@marcelpauly); US middle class fail (@nytimes); & more.
When he was laid off from Folha de S. Paulo in 2014, political reporter and columnist Fernando Rodrigues did not stop his behind-the-scenes coverage of power in Brasilia. He continued to write for his blog, which he had kept for 14 years, and to participate in a radio show. Shortly thereafter, he launched his own company, an innovative startup that has been growing, making profits and hiring journalists.
