In this article journalist Will Fischer describes how 270 students across seven universities teamed up to cover homelessness in the United States. In an ambitious nationwide investigation, Pulitzer-winning journalists served as instructors, helping the teams involved produce groundbreaking stories while teaching the next generation of reporters how to work together.
From where to pitch to how to avoid being sued, and how much you should be getting paid for your work: a new, nine-part GIJN-resource covers the business side of doing investigative journalism. The guide covers a variety of subjects, aiming to help both individuals and media institutions by providing practical tips and advice.
In the project Migrantes de otro mundo — Migrants from Another World — a team of more than 40 journalists in more than a dozen countries decided to collaborate to tell the untold story of the migrants from Asia and Africa who travel through Latin America each year. As the creators of the project put it: “By its wandering nature, migration is a story that can only be properly told through collaboration.”
For this week’s Friday 5, where GIJN rounds up key reads from around the world in English, we’ve been reading about misinformation in both pandemic and election coverage, a slew of how-tos on doing data journalism in R, and the latest research on measuring impact.
When a team of student journalists realized that thousands of New Yorkers had died due to COVID-19 but had been left out of the obituary pages, they teamed up to create Missing Them, an ambitious collaborative journalism project working to memorialize everyone that died due to COVID-19 in one of the hardest-hit cities in America.
With the help of two former students, Brazilian data journalist Marcelo Soares collected data showing that deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil’s cities were far higher than authorities claimed. Check out how he did it.
The South African investigative site Oxpeckers uses a combination of data analysis, collaboration, and interactive data visualization tools to tell the most compelling stories about the land and those accused of damaging it. From mining to environmental crimes and wildlife trafficking, it has brought investigative techniques to beats like mining that were once the preserve of business reporters.
Since it was founded in 2010, Forensic Architecture has “hacked into the source code” of architecture to produce innovative and ground-breaking investigations that use 3D modelling, data mining, machine learning, and audio analysis. Working like a lab for the development of new tools, the outfit uses many of the forensic methods of investigation that have historically been the preserve of law enforcement to investigate social and political topics and injustices.
A network of female journalists went undercover in order to investigate what women and girls around the world are told when they approach a crisis pregnancy organization. Some were told they could be killing the next president, others than abortions cause cancer. The investigation revealed the highly sophisticated tactics some centers use to break a woman’s resolve, and how the messaging can be traced back to a Christian charity based in Columbus, Ohio.
Investigative journalism has had to adapt to the realities imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Around the world, newsrooms are having to respond to challenges such as social distancing while reporting on the pressure health systems are under. GIJN and the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), invited four journalists from some of the countries that have been the most affected by the pandemic to share what they’ve learned during this process.
