Online local news start ups are devoting significantly more resources to creating content than they are to raising money to pay for it – and that may spell trouble for long term sustainability. That’s one finding from a new survey conducted earlier this year as part of my database of U.S. news start ups, www.micheleslist.org. About 80 publishers responded to the annual survey, which I conduct independently.
An extraordinary group of 20 journalists from 15 countries is running to serve on the first elected board of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. The election, being held online all this week, is the direct result of last month’s big vote by our membership to register GIJN as a nonprofit and to restructure its board of directors with worldwide representation. Each GIJN member organization gets one vote, but everyone can view the candidate bios, statements, and the election rules on our election page. The results will be announced next week!
It’s been three months since ex-president Viktor Yanukovych fled in the dead of night, after a last, desperate attempt to cover his tracks by destroying documents. It’s not going to be that easy, Mr. President. For the past three years, Ukraine’s “Journalists Day” has been commemorated with an anti-censorship rally in front of his former Mezhyhirya residence. This year, the sprawling compound itself has been hacked. From June 6-8, the Mezhyhirya Festival on investigative journalism, digital activism, and leaks will celebrate a new era of freedom of expression with those who were on site to help usher it in.
Two Danish journalists, Kjeld Hansen and Nils Mulvad, have been found guilty of violating that country’s Data Protection Act for releasing a story on the spread of pig-to-human infection. They have been fined 2.500 Danish kroner (about US$450) each. But the two say they’ve now decided to try to appeal part of the verdict. “We want the court to accept that what we have been publishing on the web since end of October 2010 is in the line with Danish law,” said Mulvad.
Three people have died in Denmark due to infection from drug-resistant “super-bug” bacteria from pigs. None of the deceased themselves had been in contact with the animals. Data on the three deaths emerged in testimony in the City Court of Aarhus, Denmark, on Tuesday, in the trial of Danish journalists Kjeld Hansen and Nils Mulvad. The two journalists are being prosecuted for revealing farms in which the bacteria is spreading. Mulvad is a co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and both work for GIJN-member Investigative Reporting Denmark.
Imagine a charming Italian town packed with journalists, data geeks, and students. Everywhere you go you run into old colleagues, someone you follow on Twitter, or your next partner in crime. Now add 225 sessions in beautiful century-old venues, 540 speakers from around the world, and 230 young volunteers ready to help. That about sums up the 8th International Journalism Festival in Perugia. Didn’t make it? Don’t worry, here are some highlights compiled by GIJN, including panels and tips on investigating crime, data techniques, social media, and crowdfunding. (Photo: GIJN members in Perugia from IRPI, ICIJ, OCCRP, VVOJ.)
Greg Palast’s approach to investigative journalism can be summed up in one phrase: Stand up for the underdogs, and take on the fatcats. His hard-hitting reports on corporations like ExxonMobil, politicians like Bush, and shadowy institutions like vulture funds stem from an impulse to challenge those players with the power to bend the rules to their private advantage. That’s why functioning democracies need people like Palast.
Despite a tough environment for investigative reporting, South Africa’s muckrakers are turning out some of the world’s best journalism year after year. Here are the finalists and winner of the just announced Taco Kuiper Awards, that country’s highest prize for investigative journalism. In the awards presentation, Wits University Journalism Professor Anton Harber talked about the extraordinary range of reports submitted, from corrupt officials and crooks to rhino horn smuggling, bad doctors, botched circumcisions, and lion hunting.
What’s the data driven journalism (#ddj) crowd tweeting about? Here are the week’s Top Data Journalism Links on Twitter (for March 20-March 27), including items from Al Jazzera, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) Data, The Guardian, and Quartz, among others.
After years of predictions that this year would be the year of mobile, finally it has arrived. So here are some numbers that should prompt strategizing and action by digital media publishers. What small and large digital publishers ought to learn from these figures is that the public is moving so quickly to mobile consumption of news and social sharing that they need to take action.
More and more, Latin American journalism is thriving in the digital space. Investigative journalism platforms online are joining forces, data journalism bootcamps are taking off and there are new accelerators looking to fund innovative news projects. “In today’s world, journalists spend more time in the virtual world than in the paper stacks,” said Carlos Eduardo Huertas, director of Connectas, a nonprofit which supports transnational journalism.
We have several reports on Ukraine today. First, some good news: GIJN’s member in Crimea, the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism, is back in its office after vigilantes seized it on March 2. Spurred by the attack, GIJN worked with the Internet Archive to back up its site, and now we’ve helped preserve seven more independent media sites in Ukraine. And then the bad news: attacks continue on the media there, chronicled in a harrowing list of incidents compiled by the Crimean Center.
This is a great time to be an investigative journalist in Ukraine. It is a moment of big disclosures. We had been reporting on the ultra-luxurious style of Yanukovych’s life and his corrupt ties for a long period, when this information was very well-guarded and kept as a big secret. It’s like one was trying to get into a closed, dark room for a long time. And then suddenly the walls have fallen.
In the hours after Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev, reports started surfacing that there were documents floating in the reservoir on his palatial 350-acre estate outside the capital. The estate is well known to the media as an off-limits location; journalists, in fact, had never entered more than 300 yards past the front gate, and even at the height of Yanukovych’s openness and good relations, journalists had only been allowed to the front door to receive cakes on journalism day.
The Marshall Project’s recent launch announcement confirmed that in coming years, many new investigative news media will resemble stakeholder media — vehicles that are aimed at specific communities of interest. This non-profit Marshall Projectorganisation’s strategic goal is to become the central information hub for public insight into the criminal justice system. But within that general public, the first target will clearly be those directly concerned by the system. The stakeholder community for this venture is immense. It includes present and former prisoners, their families, law enforcement and auxiliaries, justice departments, the courts, lawyers — an audience of millions.
This week the Investigative Journalism Education Consortium begins a new initiative in bringing together journalism educators from throughout the world who teach investigative reporting. The idea to expand the range of IJEC emerged from the Global Investigative Journalism Conference held in October in Rio de Janeiro where the conference organized, for the first time, a professor track of sessions and presentation of papers. Professors from six continents found they had much in common and were eager to continue the conversations and share research and teaching methods.
Reporters Without Borders today released its 2014 World Press Freedom Index, spotlighting major declines in media freedom in such varied countries as the United States, Central African Republic, and Guatemala while noting marked improvements in Ecuador, Bolivia, and South Africa. The same trio of Finland, Netherlands, and Norway heads the index again, while Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea continue to be the biggest information black holes, again occupying the last three positions. You can find RSF’s full index and a 3-dimensional map here. The report is also available in several languages other than English.
Power sets barriers and the reporter pushes back against them—it’s an unwritten rule on which Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez believed all journalistic work is based. Some governments, however, have begun to voluntarily lower these barriers by approving legislation designed to make information more accessible to their citizens. To date, approximately 90 countries globally have freedom of information laws, which establish rules and deadlines for facilitating the collection of data.
In June 2013, we invited our colleagues in the Global Investigative Journalism Network to name the book-length works of journalism, scholarship, and even fiction that had influenced their practice as investigators. The resultant list isn’t comprehensive – though we invite you to help complete it by sending us your favorites, including full title, authors, publication or broadcast date, a one-line bio to identify yourself so we can give you credit, and two or three lines that explain why you find a given work special. (Let someone else recommend your own stuff, please.)
In his 1999 book Development as Freedom, renowned economist and Noble laureate Amartya Sen stated that investment in healthcare can lead to success in meeting a wide range of development targets, such as those identified by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Indeed, good healthcare improves quality of life, reduces morbidity and mortality, and raises economic productivity. As such, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised the importance of universal health coverage (UHC) and urged its member states to adopt programmes providing essential health packages.
How do you cover corruption in Pakistan’s national security agencies? With caution and plenty of guts. Such reporting got investigative journalist Umar Cheema kidnapped, tortured, and nearly killed in 2010, but the founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan hasn’t backed down. Check out the latest from the Islamabad-based Cheema, who this week revealed that elite counter-terrorism officials used a secret agency fund to buy wedding gifts, luxury carpets, and gold jewelry for relatives of ministers and visiting dignitaries.
Paul Radu of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project gave an engaging talk at the recent TEDxBucharest gathering, looking at the globalization of crime and how investigation reporters and public-interest hackers can push back. Among the topics he covers: Russian money laundering, European horse meat, and Azerbaijan corruption. Says Radu: “In order to fight a network, you need to create a network.”
Winners of the Global Shining Light Award have donated their US$1000 in prize money to the family of imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist Avaz Zeynalli. The Shining Light Award honors investigative journalism in a developing or transitioning country, done under threat or duress. Zeynalli was editor in chief of the daily newspaper Khural, one of a handful of independent media voices in the repressive, oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan, which lies at the borders of Russia, Iran, and Turkey
