Mother Jones is a US outlet known for “smart, fearless journalism.” Monika Bauerlein, its CEO, believes that the kind of investigative journalism they do cannot be funded by traditional commercial means. That’s why it operates as a nonprofit with a heavy focus on reader donations as a revenue stream.
Because of growing threats to democracy, and a recent series of ever more extreme societal and planetary crises, funders now see more clearly the pivotal, central role that independent public interest media play in keeping our societies and economies open. And what’s even more encouraging is to see this positive talk backed up with concrete measures and actions.
Andras Petho, co-founder of the investigative news outlet Direkt36, offers lessons learned from witnessing first-hand the press crackdown of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
This edition of the GIJN Toolbox explores global databases and remote sensing resources that reporters can use to investigate local environmental threats.
Journalists across southern Africa face a variety of obstacles to investigative reporting — from funding struggles to state censorship to legal intimidation — but are still innovating and collaborating to persevere.
GIJN’s latest membership class includes its first two members from Francophone Africa and three new members in the Middle East/North Africa. They range from investigative newsrooms and media development groups to university-based centers and cross-border networks. GIJN also welcomed members from six previously unrepresented countries: Cameroon, Malta, Paraguay, Palestine, Senegal, and the Slovak Republic.
After the group that owned half of Quebec’s daily newspapers went bust, Canada’s Le Soleil newspaper was part of a group that created Canada’s largest newsroom cooperative, counting on the support of their readers and their own staff to ensure their survival. One year on, and despite the COVID-19 pandemic, they are thriving.
Newsrooms are increasingly embracing newsletters as they seek to engage and grow their audiences. But there’s more than one way to tackle the form. Here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at what goes into creating newsletters for nonprofit newsrooms that explore single-subject issues, like education or gun violence.
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.
Independent news organizations in Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea are experiencing both direct and indirect challenges in cyberspace, from content blocking to censorship and self-censorship. Edgardo Legaspi, executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, says threatened governments are “playing catch-up” after recognizing that the Internet can be an effective tool for voices to be heard.
