As we gather for the second Asian Investigative Journalism Conference, this seems a good time to share again with our colleagues where the Global Investigative Journalism Network and its conferences come from. It was a simple idea at the end of the 20th century — to gather the world’s investigative journalists to share their knowledge with each other — that gave birth to GIJN, which has now grown to 138 member organizations in 62 countries.
Journalism is under threat. Investigative reporting, in particular, is under attack as never before, and we need your help. For 15 years, the Global Investigative Journalism Network has trained and supported the world’s most determined reporters as they’ve dug into corruption and abuses of power. We’ve helped bring watchdog reporting to the far corners of the Earth, and today investigative journalists are in more countries doing tougher reporting than we ever imagined.
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.”
Investigative journalists and other citizens interested in uncovering the organised crime and corruption that affect the lives of billions of people worldwide gain, with each passing day, unprecedented access to information. Huge volumes of information are being made available online by governments and other organisations, and it seems that the much-needed information is in everyone’s grasp. However, corrupt officials in governments and organised crime groups are doing their best to conceal information and to hide their wrongdoings.
This intriguing graph depicts a network of 989 Twitter users whose tweets from January 13 to 24 contained the hashtag “#ddj” (data-driven journalism). We’re pleased to see that our site gijn.org was among the top domains and our data journalism resource page among the top URLs that appeared. This work is the brainchild of Marc Smith (@marc_smith), a sociologist of “computer-mediated collective action” who, among his varied activities, maps social media networks that reveal “the key people, groups, and topics discussed in a public conversation.”
