A joint investigation by a historian and a journalist revealed that a number of US universities were beneficiaries from land expropriated from Indigenous communities. The authors, Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, reveal what tools helped them uncover the story. They built a geodatabase and traced the money to find out where the land had come from and how much was paid for it.
In South Sudan, conflict and government repression make it difficult to do on-the-ground reporting, so a team of journalists designed a mobile phone survey to gather data on forced displacement and destruction across the country. Carolyn Thompson explains why their award-winning investigation may offer lessons to others working in repressive environments or facing movement restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic.
An Australian documentary team used user-generated footage to create a film about Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of China’s COVID-19 outbreak. They used clips filmed on mobile phones that showed people with the virus being dragged into vans by police, and bodies left on the street and on hospital floors, using different tools to verify the material.
The New York Times’ Privacy Project highlighted the alarmingly unregulated activity of location data companies collecting data from millions of smartphone users. As the coronavirus pandemic sheds further light on the uses and misuses of location tracking, here’s a deeper look at the project that visualized phones being tracked around the US, from the Pentagon and the White House to the streets of San Francisco.
As coronavirus sweeps through communities around the world, the Membership Puzzle Project has shared examples from newsrooms around the world on how they have quickly adapted pillars of their membership programs and memberful routines to respond to the realities of this crisis.
Governments around the world, some which have sent workers home, are announcing interruptions in responding to freedom of information requests. Journalists are being told to expect delays in more than a dozen countries. But press freedom advocates warn that countries are taking big steps backward just when the free flow of information is most needed. GIJN’s Toby McIntosh rounds up some of the nations which have been affected.
Journalists around the world are investigating many angles of the coronavirus pandemic. GIJN has collected some of the best reporting to date, hoping these 50 examples from 17 countries will inspire even more investigative journalism.
In “Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian’s Playbook,” The GroundTruth Project chronicles seven leaders whose instincts and inclinations herald a brand of populist nationalism that, if history is a guide, can lead to authoritarian government. From Brazil to Italy and the US, these global leaders seem to share common “plays,” including weaponizing fear, undermining institutions and targeting outsiders. GroundTruth fellows offer tips for journalists covering this rising authoritarianism.
Following the major corruption investigation “Azerbaijani Laundromat,” Paul Radu, co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, was sued for libel in the United Kingdom by an Azerbaijani politician. Radu explains what he learned while fighting the case, which ended in a favorable settlement.
Italy’s first center for investigative reporting was created in 2012 with very little resources. Since then it has become a well-established player in the Italian media landscape. The group has grappled with financial challenges, threats, and intimidation, but have big plans for the future. Michele Barbero profiled Investigative Reporting Project Italy for GIJN.
Crowdfunding has become very popular in the Czech Republic, where it is often used to help launch independent media outlets or to get money to finance individual projects and cover specific topics.
In Kenya, the NGOs Transparency International and Fojo Media Institute have paired up to train budding investigative journalists and offer them reporting grants. GIJN’s Rowan Philp reports.
Initially founded by the UN, The New Humanitarian became independent five years ago and is stepping up its investigative work into the multi-billion dollar aid industry. Rowan Philp profiles the organization working to hold the humanitarian sector to account.
The Pangolin Reports brought together more than 40 journalists in 14 countries to investigate the illegal trade in pangolins, a harmless ant-eating mammal which is close to extinction. This is what they learned about collaborative journalism.
Around the world, millions of people seem to be tuning serious journalism out, as the fallout from misinformation, fatigue, and rival information sources overwhelm audience attention. But in three developing countries, large new audiences are now tuning in – to watch investigative reporting teams compete in Pop Idol-style reality shows.
The Membership Puzzle project went around the world to identify “memberful” routines that incorporate community members’ knowledge and produce value for news organizations. Here is what they found.
Investigating a big story can create an abundance of leads — sometimes, more than one journalist or even one newsroom can use. Here’s how Reveal created its Reporting Networks to share those leads with local journalists across the United States.
Satire can make journalism more entertaining and accessible for new audiences. But how can you turn your headline into a punchline? To find out, Amina Boubia from the Open Society Foundations’ Program on Independent Journalism spoke to two veterans of political satire: Isam Uraiqat and Juan Ravell.
A group of independent reporters and photographers, working in different parts of Mexico, decided to come together and try to answer a fundamental question: Where do the disappeared of the drug war end up? GIJN’s Spanish editor Catalina Lobo-Guerrero spoke with the team of journalists to find out how they did it.
When journalists practice transparency around their processes, their goals, and their values, news consumers tend to respond positively — and sometimes, they even spend more money on journalism. That was the case with an experiment that Trusting News ran with PolitiFact.
Yemen has been embroiled in civil war for decades. But its current conflict has left 100,000 dead, with hundreds of thousands more displaced. While the war has received limited coverage by most international and mainstream media outlets, during 2018 and 2019 a team of Associated Press journalists spent months investigating Yemen’s Dirty War. Maggie Michael, Nariman El-Mofty, and Maad al-Zekri won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. GIJN’s Majdolin Hasan spoke with Michael about how they did it.
To investigate radicalization on YouTube, journalists from two Dutch media outlets teamed up and examined 600,000 videos, 120 million comments, and 20 million automatically-generated recommendations —using software they wrote for this occasion. Dimitri Tokmetzis, who runs the data desk at De Correspondent, wrote about how they did it for GIJN.
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.
Thriving as a digital publisher is a challenge anywhere, but those in lower-income countries and in repressive media environments face additional hurdles. A new report looks at the experiences of 54 digital publishers around the world and identifies factors that contribute to resilience in these markets.
Reporter Sarah Kliff has investigated healthcare billing in the United States by enlisting the help of readers, who sent her thousands of emergency room bills. Beyond writing for Vox and the New York Times, she’s also written about this topic for a professional medical journal that’s read by doctors.
The Guardian has re-built its business around membership, and last year it appointed its executive editor for membership, Lee Glendinning, who formerly led the Guardian US. She explains how she uses her role to experiment and test new approaches.
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.
After NJ Advance Media spent lots of time and money to find and clean up data for a police accountability project, it decided to sell this data, while still keeping its database free to the public. Reporter Stephen Stirling tells OpenNews’s Erika Owens how this works.
