Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema has won awards, fellowships, and international acclaim for his investigative reports. But at home he and his colleagues are under sustained attack, and he reports now that surveillance and harassment are increasing. Check out the activity among Cheema’s impressive 123,000 Twitter followers after he announced his election to the GIJN board.
We are the first nonprofit investigative newsroom in the German-speaking world. Our goal is to give citizens access to information. We are one of the many answers to the media crisis. The old models of business are losing effectiveness. At the same time, journalists need to find better ways of explaining an increasingly complex world. Publishers are shutting down newspapers or cutting their budgets. Digital media has not been able to make up for this loss. The media has trouble fulfilling its watchdog role. CORRECT!V aims to change this: we want to make investigative and informative journalism affordable and accessible to media organizations throughout Germany.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for June 19-26), including items from The Star, The Functional Art, and The Huffington Post, among others.
GIJN is excited to introduce Digital Digging, a new feature by acclaimed Internet search expert Henk van Ess. In this inaugural story, Henk sets sail to a world without selfies or cat pictures, showing readers how to stay on top of Twitter by changing their workflow. Here’s part one of a series of three.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for June 12-21), including items from Berliner Morgenpost, La Nación, Journalism++, and The Huffingtonpost, among others.
The results are in! GIJN members have voted for their first elected board of directors, selecting 15 people from 11 countries. The week-long online election ended June 16. “It’s a really strong board with a good mix of people from different countries and regions, and also a good combination of GIJN veterans and new members,” said GIJN co-founder Nils Mulvad. “In fact, there are also many great people who ran but were not elected this time. I hope we can count on them to help us where they have expertise.”
Online local news start ups are devoting significantly more resources to creating content than they are to raising money to pay for it – and that may spell trouble for long term sustainability. That’s one finding from a new survey conducted earlier this year as part of my database of U.S. news start ups, www.micheleslist.org. About 80 publishers responded to the annual survey, which I conduct independently.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for June 6-12), including items from Journalism++, Tages-Anzeiger, the Tow Center, and Quartz, among others.
This compelling 15-minute documentary tells the inside story of Yanukovychleaks, the extraordinary team investigation that recovered thousands of documents left behind by Ukraine’s fleeing ex-president. Here’s how a group of young Ukrainian journalists from competing outlets banded together for one the great scoops of the decade. The video, sponsored by GIJN members OCCRP and Scoop, was released at last weekend’s Mezhyhirya Festival, in which more than 300 journalists, data experts, and activists gathered at Yanukovych’s former estate.
An extraordinary group of 20 journalists from 15 countries is running to serve on the first elected board of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. The election, being held online all this week, is the direct result of last month’s big vote by our membership to register GIJN as a nonprofit and to restructure its board of directors with worldwide representation. Each GIJN member organization gets one vote, but everyone can view the candidate bios, statements, and the election rules on our election page. The results will be announced next week!
It’s been three months since ex-president Viktor Yanukovych fled in the dead of night, after a last, desperate attempt to cover his tracks by destroying documents. It’s not going to be that easy, Mr. President. For the past three years, Ukraine’s “Journalists Day” has been commemorated with an anti-censorship rally in front of his former Mezhyhirya residence. This year, the sprawling compound itself has been hacked. From June 6-8, the Mezhyhirya Festival on investigative journalism, digital activism, and leaks will celebrate a new era of freedom of expression with those who were on site to help usher it in.
Two Danish journalists, Kjeld Hansen and Nils Mulvad, have been found guilty of violating that country’s Data Protection Act for releasing a story on the spread of pig-to-human infection. They have been fined 2.500 Danish kroner (about US$450) each. But the two say they’ve now decided to try to appeal part of the verdict. “We want the court to accept that what we have been publishing on the web since end of October 2010 is in the line with Danish law,” said Mulvad.
GIJN members worldwide have voted overwhelmingly to make the Global Investigative Journalism Network a registered nonprofit in the United States, and to restructure its board to ensure geographic representation from six regions. Until now, GIJN has not been registered in any country. “This a great validation of how far we have come since 2003,” said GIJN co-founder Brant Houston. “Once again, we have moved to another stage in GIJN with close to unanimous agreement.”
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for May 13-23), including items from Open News, IJNet, and the Tow Center, among others.
Three people have died in Denmark due to infection from drug-resistant “super-bug” bacteria from pigs. None of the deceased themselves had been in contact with the animals. Data on the three deaths emerged in testimony in the City Court of Aarhus, Denmark, on Tuesday, in the trial of Danish journalists Kjeld Hansen and Nils Mulvad. The two journalists are being prosecuted for revealing farms in which the bacteria is spreading. Mulvad is a co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and both work for GIJN-member Investigative Reporting Denmark.
Imagine a charming Italian town packed with journalists, data geeks, and students. Everywhere you go you run into old colleagues, someone you follow on Twitter, or your next partner in crime. Now add 225 sessions in beautiful century-old venues, 540 speakers from around the world, and 230 young volunteers ready to help. That about sums up the 8th International Journalism Festival in Perugia. Didn’t make it? Don’t worry, here are some highlights compiled by GIJN, including panels and tips on investigating crime, data techniques, social media, and crowdfunding. (Photo: GIJN members in Perugia from IRPI, ICIJ, OCCRP, VVOJ.)
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for April 23-30), including items from the Tow Center and The Upshot, among others.
This video was taken by a drone and then posted on a popular web portal in China. It provides an aerial view of the luxurious home of the son of Zhou Yongkang, the country’s security chief. There’s not much commentary here, just tracking shots of a white, two-story mansion built in the traditional style. But the real evidence showing corruption in the Zhou family wasn’t dug up by drones. Instead, it was names etched on tombstones in a village in China’s Jiangsu Province that allowed reporters to find the corruption trail.
Launching a news publication online is the easy part. Paying the bills and surviving for several years is the hard part. Three of those who have evolved and survived for at least five years are La Silla Vacia, a political website in Colombia, Homicide Watch, a news and data platform in three U.S. cities, and Texas Tribune, a news site focused on Texas civic life.
Greg Palast’s approach to investigative journalism can be summed up in one phrase: Stand up for the underdogs, and take on the fatcats. His hard-hitting reports on corporations like ExxonMobil, politicians like Bush, and shadowy institutions like vulture funds stem from an impulse to challenge those players with the power to bend the rules to their private advantage. That’s why functioning democracies need people like Palast.
