Every year thousands of migrants cross one of the most dangerous borders in the world: the Darién Gap, a magnificent but deadly rainforest that connects Colombia and Panama. GIJN spoke to a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, and one of her teammates, who trekked through the jungle to investigate what happens en route.
We have rolled into the third calendar year of the pandemic, but the debate about how journalists present data on the coronavirus continues to rage. Just six days into 2022, a spiral chart divided the data journalism community into two camps. Our weekly NodeXL analysis and curation of the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter also features an investigation into the prenatal testing industry, a visualization of death threats received by election staff, and an interactive map of Russian military bases near the Ukraine border.
Ten years ago, terror attacks in Norway claimed the lives of 77 people and seriously injured at least 40. Our NodeXL mapping from July 5 to 11 found an interactive timeline piece by Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang telling the story of a tragic event that impacted an entire nation. In this edition, we also feature an investigation by Reuters into a Chinese company harvesting genetic data from pregnant women, a series on gun violence in Chicago by The Trace, and a look at “silent” Russian politicians by IStories.
As governments around the world continue vaccination efforts and extend lockdowns, some experts argue that more data is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of immunization campaigns and mobility restrictions. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from January 11 to 18 found outlets in Germany and the United Kingdom analyzing government measures to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this edition, we also feature an insightful interview with former Washington Post journalist Aaron Williams, an interactive timeline of the US Capitol riot by ProPublica, and a refreshing data visualization project by The Pudding.
GIJN has rounded up seven of the talks in the TED back-catalogue that are most interesting and relevant for investigative journalists. Available for free online, and in multiple languages, this selection spreads the word about tools, stories, and interesting investigations to audiences around the world.
GIJN’s Spanish Editor Andrea Arzaba rounds up the top investigative stories from Latin American media outlets in 2020, focusing on deep dive investigations into important but often overlooked topics including femicide and migration.
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.”
In the midst of the pandemic, some newsrooms haven’t forgotten about the issue of climate change. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from July 20 to 26 found ProPublica partnering with The New York Times Magazine to examine climate migration and where climate refugees are moving to. On the COVID-19 front, FiveThirtyEight revealed the disparities in the availability of testing sites between Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and white areas, broadcaster RBB highlighted that the risk of coronavirus was more keenly felt by low-income earners, and the Google News Initiative and Agência Lupa communicated the impact of the coronavirus by visually putting readers at the epicenter of an outbreak.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with freelance journalist Sally Hayden, who has won multiple awards for her reporting on migration. She told GIJN’s Helen Massy-Beresford about the tools she uses to communicate securely with sources, record interviews, manage a freelance career, and more.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from September 30 to Oct 6 finds Al Jazeera Labs analyzing the key issues debated and voted at the United Nations General Assembly since 1946, Datajournalism.com gathering expert advice on doing data journalism during natural disasters, Knight Center offering a free data visualization course in three languages, and El Confidencial visualizing the internal migration patterns in Spain’s provinces.
