GIJN asked investigative journalists around the world to look ahead at what’s in store for 2020. Here are the trends, key forces, and challenges they expect will affect investigative and data journalism in the coming year, as well as the new skills and approaches we should be thinking about.
Increasingly, the most ambitious data journalism projects are fueled by collaborations. But these take a lot of planning. Before you embark on a collaboration, check out ProPublica’s playbook.
Over the past four days, 1,700 journalists from 130 countries gathered in Hamburg, Germany, to share experiences, learn from expert speakers, network with kindred spirits, and find new partners for their next investigations. It was the most diverse and largest-ever international gathering of investigative journalists, and a perfect place to be inspired.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from September 9 to 15 finds ProPublica open-sourcing its collaborative reporting software; CityLab interviewing Mark Monmonier, author of “How to Lie With Maps,” on Donald Trump’s deceptive hurricane map; Al Jazeera surveying South Sudan’s citizens on displacement; and Reuters visualizing just how bad the Earth’s problem is in terms of single-use plastics.
Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach had been investigating the alleged relationship between drug traffickers and politicians in northern Mexico for years when she was shot eight times in front of her home in 2016. However, several of her colleagues would not be silenced and, more than two years after her murder, published a series of reports on the case and the loose ends left by the official investigation of the crime.
To expose the massive, cross-border corruption scandal that came to be known as Operação Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, journalists from across Latin America had to find ways to work together. In the process, they transformed investigative journalism in the region. GIJN Spanish Editor Catalina Lobo-Guerrero wrote the story of their epic collaboration.
In US cities, the local news ecosystem is suffering from a long list of ailments. But in Colorado, hundreds of people — journalists, professors, students, business folk, local foundations, and more — have stepped up to do something about it. And they have a few ideas for where to start.
Vsquare publishes longform investigative journalism stories in English on Central Eastern Europe, focusing on the Visegrád region that includes Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Most investigative journalists and others interested in our work don’t know much about what goes on behind the scenes at GIJN. But on April 10 at the Frontline Club in London, over 100 people heard about the challenges faced by GIJN’s regional editors and the journalists they work with around the world.
Nonprofit newsrooms are increasingly turning to syndication partnerships that expand their reach and collaborations that expand reporting capacity. The Shorenstein Center surveyed eight of these news organizations to find out how these types of partnerships work in practice and how they are evolving.
