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News & Analysis

937 posts

News & Analysis

A New Era for Storytelling

In everyday journalism, to get the public to pay attention to your story, to make it not only truthful, but also credible and attractive, is a hard task. And it has become even harder in the digital era. Information flows constantly through our portable electronic devices, like a river of muddy waters, dragging the authentic pieces of story-telling together with the fake; the verified; and the gossip. So if journalists want to have any chance at succeeding in this battle, they must not only find good stories, but must also elevate their story-telling to an art.

News & Analysis

China’s Environmental Journalists Shine Despite Dark Times

Over 100 outstanding Chinese journalists have received prizes in the six years that our awards have been handed out. During this time we have seen for ourselves the decline of the news industry – but also seen many fine journalists bucking that trend by carrying on the baton of journalistic ideals and professionalism. Journalism has never been an easy job, and those who possess the ideals and the strength of character of a good journalist will flourish even in the hard times.

News & Analysis

Sheila Coronel’s Speech Gives Inspiration at IRE16

The awards luncheon at the annual IRE conference featured a moving keynote address by Columbia University’s Sheila Coronel. Her speech focused on the contagious and empowering spirit of collaboration taking hold among investigative journalists worldwide.

News & Analysis

Coronel: A Golden Age of Global Muckraking at Hand

Ten years ago, when I first moved to New York and gave my first lecture at the Columbia Journalism School, I told students that I believe we are at the dawn of a Golden Age of global muckraking. They were a great class, but they didn’t believe me. But look at where we are now.

News & Analysis

New Journalism Ecosystem Thrives Worldwide

“In the immortal words of Sir Isaac Newton more than three centuries ago, ‘To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.’” In October 2010, Executive Editor Charles Lewis wrote these words for the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s first New Journalism Ecosystem research on nonprofit news organizations in the United States. Those same words summarize the events that led to the launch of the Hungarian nonprofit center for investigative journalism, Direkt36, and many other similar centers around the world.

News & Analysis

Khadija Ismayilova Freed from Azerbaijan Prison

Journalist Khadija Ismayilova was set free after her final appeal hearing today at the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan two days before her 40th birthday. Ismayilova, an award-winning reporter who exposed the corruption of the ruling Aliyev family, has been in prison in Baku since her arrest on Dec. 5, 2014. “There was no crime,” Ismayilova told the press upon her release. “President Aliyev and his clique decided to get rid of any criticism against them.”

News & Analysis

Global Press Freedom Plunges to 12-Year Low

Global press freedom declined to its lowest point in 12 years in 2015, as political, criminal, and terrorist forces sought to co-opt or silence the media in their broader struggle for power, according to Freedom of the Press 2016, Freedom House’s annual report on media freedom worldwide. Only 14 percent of the world’s population enjoys a free press—that is, where coverage of political news is robust, the safety of journalists is guaranteed, state intrusion in media affairs is minimal, and the press is not subject to onerous legal or economic pressures.

News & Analysis

RSF’s Press Freedom Index: A Growing Paranoia of Journalism

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released its World Press Freedom Index, ranking 180 countries according to the level of freedom available to journalists. “It is unfortunately clear that many of the world’s leaders are developing a form of paranoia about legitimate journalism,” wrote RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire. The index showed a deep and disturbing decline in respect for press freedom, and a climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests.

News & Analysis

How Creative Journalists Confront Hostile Media Environments

From a media outlet that pays citizens to report from remote areas of Kenya to a portal that uses humor as its main strategy to inform Russians, journalism faces different challenges in different cultural and social contexts. Creativity, however, seems to be a common skill that media entrepreneurs shared in addressing their problems at the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) on Saturday, April 16.

News & Analysis

Spotlight Movie: A “Hard Sell” but $88m in Global Sales

Since premiering in the United States in late 2015, the movie Spotlight has earned US$88 million in revenue, split almost evenly between U.S. ($45 million) and international sales ($43 million). Along the way, the movie has earned two Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Screenplay) and given journalists around the world a needed boost. But winning Academy Awards didn’t lift Spotlight too high. The movie is the second lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in the last 38 years.

News & Analysis

Panama Papers Showcase Power of a Global Movement

The ongoing and spectacular investigation “Panama Papers” represents the culmination of a significant shift in the way journalism is now practiced. The project also represents 40 years of work done by groups of investigative reporters to bring the profession into the 21st Century. “The Panama Papers showcases not so much technological power but the power of the global investigative reporting movement,” says Sheila Coronel of the Columbia Journalism School.

News & Analysis

Against the Odds, Investigative Journalism Persists in Middle East

In the past year, a group of Arab journalists has been working secretly in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria, and Yemen as part of a global network of investigative reporters mining the so called “Panama Papers.” They found that some Arab strongmen and their business partners are linked to offshore companies and bank accounts. What’s astonishing about this story is not that Arab dictators are going offshore to hide their wealth and evade sanctions. It’s that a community of Arab journalists is continuing to do investigative reporting in a region where there is increasingly little tolerance for accountability of any kind.

News & Analysis

Are Panama Papers Really a Campaign Against Privacy?

We do agree with Ramon Fonseca about one thing: that “Each person has a right to privacy, whether they are a king or a beggar.” But that’s where our commonality with co-founder of disgraced Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca ends. This scandal isn’t about privacy. If anything, it’s about the need for transparency about how the powerful wield their power.

News & Analysis

Engagement or Reach: How To Best Find Our Audience

At a recent meeting of the Institute for Nonprofit News – for my sins, I now sit on INN’s board – we learned an interesting statistic: About half the organization’s members have a strategy to drive readers to their own sites/destinations, and the other half count on distributing their content via other platforms. Does it matter how we reach readers? And should we care?

News & Analysis

South Africa Awards Highlight Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

We gather for the 10th time to pay tribute to journalists who spend their time digging and probing – and often risking their lives for little reward – to expose wrongdoing. Investigative reporters have been derisively called “muckrakers”, but we embrace that label to say that we are proud of those who play such an important role in our society by digging around in the dirt to hold the powerful to account.

News & Analysis

GIJN Statement: Attacks on Dojčinović and KRIK Must End

The Global Investigative Journalism Network, an association of 128 organizations in 58 countries, deplores recent attacks on the character and work of Stevan Dojčinović and the KRIK investigative reporting center in Serbia. We call upon the government of Serbia to take all measures to protect the security of Mr. Dojčinović and his staff, and to respect their freedom to conduct independent journalism.

News & Analysis

Investigative Journalism & Foreign Aid: A Huge Return on Investment

It’s not unusual for investigative reporting to lead to huge fines. Exposés of foreign bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion have led to billions of dollars recovered by governments worldwide. What is shocking about these numbers is how they compare to the paucity of foreign aid to investigative journalists where it is most needed — in developing and transitioning countries.

News & Analysis

Angola: From Being Bullied to Dictator’s Nightmare

Writing has been my life’s passion and my curse too. In my teens, I was bullied for being an avid reader and for wanting to express my opinions as informed by my readings. I vividly remember being taunted with the idea that “too much reading will bring you madness, and disgrace.”

News & Analysis

Sometimes Dog Bites Man Really Is the Story – And We Keep Missing it

There are things that happen with such regularity and predictability that journalists have simply ceased to recognize their news value – not least if those things are least likely to happen to the people most likely to be journalists. That much of what we have come to accept as commonplace has dulled our curiosity to why so much of what is commonplace is unacceptable; that given the prevailing and escalating inequalities and inequities, we simply do not occupy the same worlds we portend to cover – even when those worlds are right on our door step.

News & Analysis

Spotlight Wins Oscars for Best Picture, Screenplay

The movie Spotlight, based on the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting into pedophilia inside the Catholic Church, won best picture and best screenplay at the 2016 Academy Awards late Sunday. “We would not be here today without the heroic efforts of our reporters,” declared producer Blye Pagon Faust as she accepted the award. “Not only do they effect global change, but they absolutely show us the necessity of investigative journalism.”

News & Analysis

Information is Power: Sustainable Development Labs

Sustainable Development Labs can bring the benefits of Technology and Innovation to the poorest communities in our cities and nations, providing education, jobs, and growth by channeling IT projects to work with and for the people in those communities.

News & Analysis

How the BBC Abandoned Investigative Reporting

The BBC has more journalists than any other media outlet in Britain, but out of those 4,000 men and women, yes 4,000, precisely none of them work in an investigations unit. The Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph and Mail have far less journalists between them but they all maintain centralized investigations units.

News & Analysis

Why David Daleiden Is Not An Investigative Reporter

The American conservative movement is redefining the practice of investigative journalism to support its objectives. The movement’s key tool is undercover work, penetrating liberal organizations to collect and report embarrassing material, then feeding it to social and political adversaries of those organizations.

News & Analysis

IRE’s Meyer Awards Honor Best Use of Social Science

A data-driven investigation that exposed the human cost of school re-segregation in central Florida is the first-place winner of the 2015 Philip Meyer Journalism Award. Investigations that explored the growth of diversity in American cities and revealed the small cadre of attorneys who dominate the U.S. Supreme Court docket are also top winners. The Meyer Award, given annually by Investigative Reporters and Editors, recognizes the best use of social science methods in journalism.

News & Analysis

Despite Challenges, S. African Muckraking Pushes Forward

A boom in investigative journalism in South Africa seems to be winding down as media houses slash budgets to balance their books to continue to pay dividends to shareholders. “South Africa has had something of a golden era in investigative reporting, with as many as four teams at different institutions dedicated to it,” said Professor Anton Harber, head of the journalism department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

News & Analysis

Investigative Reporting in 2015: GIJN’s Top 12 Stories

As 2015 nears an end, we’d like to share our top 12 stories of the year — the stories that you, our dear readers, found most compelling. The list ranges from free data tools and crowdfunding to the secrets of the Wayback Machine. Please join us in taking a look at The Best of GIJN.org this year.