News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Questions and Tips to Guide Website Investigations
At a panel at NICAR 2023, two digital experts discussed tips and techniques for conducting investigations into suspicious websites and their owners.
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Reporting Tools & Tips
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News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Questions Every Journalist Should Ask When Covering Cryptocurrencies
Even for journalists who feel they have a good grasp on crypto technology and economics, covering the beat has been undeniably difficult. With over a decade of articles, videos, and podcasts in the rear-view mirror, now is a great time to reflect on some of the hard-learnt lessons of covering the industry.
Chapter Guide Resource
Tipsheet: Holding Your Government Accountable for Climate Change Pledges
In this abridged version, GIJN offers tips from our latest reporting guide, on how journalists can investigate their country’s climate change pledges and hold governments accountable.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Experts Discuss Investigating Social Media Companies Like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok
Investigative journalists intending to cover social media and its societial effects must understand the intricacies of the companies that drive them, and think critically about novel angles of coverage.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
How to Reach Hard-to-Access Stories — and Audiences — with Audio
At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, veteran journalists from Africa and the Middle East discussed the power and intimacy of audio and podcast reporting and how it can enable reporters to better access hard-to-cover stories.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
7 Tips for Reporting on the Local Impacts of International Trade
Clark Merrefield, from The Journalist’s Resource, shares seven tips on how local journalists can better investigate global trade and its impact on their communities.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Tips for Investigating Suspicious Real Estate Deals in France — and Around the World
The vast majority of people who own properties are not engaged in any misconduct or possible criminal behavior. But land deals or real estate purchases made with inexplicable funding sources can be a telltale sign of corruption.
Tipsheet Investigative Techniques Reporting Tools & Tips
4 More Essential Tips for Using the Wayback Machine
Based on an interview with Wayback Machine’s director, Mark Graham, ProPublica’s Craig Silverman shares more essential tips on using it, including how to bulk archive pages, compare changes, and see when elements of a page were archived.
Case Studies Reporting Tools & Tips
How Tai Nalon Creates New Tools to Investigate and Fact-Check Brazilian Politics
For GIJN’s My Favorite Tools series we spoke with Brazilian journalist Tai Nalon, executive director and co-founder of the fact-checking website Aos Fatos, who now leads an award-winning reporting team of nearly 20 people.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
What’s in a Name? Investigating People Across Borders
It’s increasingly common for criminals to operate across borders. So investigative reporters also need to know how to identify and investigate people whose names use different alphabets, are formed by unfamiliar conventions, or carry unexpected cultural signals. Read these tips from the OCCRP on best practices for investigating names from outside the English-speaking world.
Press Freedom Reporting Tools & Tips
Avoiding Censorship: How to Move Anonymously on the Internet
The methods and tools that governments employ to censor and control the internet, and the tools and ways to get around censorship, are a constantly shifting battleground. But there is a set of evergreen best practices and helpful software that are useful.
Chapter Guide Resource Chapter Guide Resource
Investigating the Digital Threat Landscape
Featuring tools and resources for protecting your reporting — and your sources — from surveillance and other online attacks.
Reporting Tools & Tips Research
New Document Tools to Unearth Redacted Text, Personal Information, and More
DocumentCloud now includes many more cutting-edge functions — which include extracting personal identification information embedded in large files, importing data from programs like Google Drive, transcribing YouTube audio, and even peering through weak blackout redactions.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Tips to Amplify Investigative Impact
Impact experts say there are several ways to help direct the attention of change-makers — as well as other media — to your key findings, and even nudge them to action.
Chapter Guide Resource
Investigating Digital Threats: Disinformation
This chapter covers misinformation and disinformation and tools to counter them, as well as case studies.
Reporting Tools & Tips Safety & Security
The Latest on Coping with Internet Shutdowns and Online Censorship
The National Press Club recently hosted a panel of cybersecurity and digital experts to discuss the latest in government internet shutdowns and online censorship — and how journalists can work around these challenges.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Testing the Potential of Using ChatGPT to Extract Data from PDFs
Converting text documents like PDFs to spreadsheets is tedious and expensive work. To see how well AI tool ChatGPT can extract data from PDFs, data journalist Brandon Roberts wrote a Python script to convert two document sets to spreadsheets.
Reporting Tools & Tips
New Investigative Tools for Monitoring Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are among the most difficult sites to scrape for data across the internet. A recent session at NICAR23 unveiled several dynamic new tools — including Junkipedia, a possible CrowdTangle replacement — that can perform a wealth of social media monitoring tasks, from tracking down who is behind harmful ads to identifying conspiracy groups or influencers spreading disinformation.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
10 Simple Data Errors That Can Ruin an Investigation
At the 2023 NICAR conference, GIJN talked with several data journalism experts and learned 10 simple data journalism errors to avoid that could ruin your investigation.
Guide Resource
Reporting Guide to Investigating Disability Issues
In this reporting guide we’ve included some of the various definitions of disability, important resources, and key issues for journalists to investigate.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
New Reporting Tools to Archive Videos, Find QAnon Networks, and Track Targets via Online Reviews
These new reporting tools and apps, which recently debuted at two Bellingcat Hackathons, can help journalists easily archive videos, locate satellite imagery, and track people via online reviews.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Tips for Organizing Audio and Video Files and Making Them Searchable
There are different tools reporters can use to make video and audio files searchable, they should be an essential part of any investigative journalist’s toolkit.
Guide Resource
GIJN’s Updated Guide to Planespotting and Flight Tracking
Investigative journalists have long used information about airplanes to uncover corruption, follow wars, track government officials, and point out the levels of greenhouse gases emitted. GIJN has now revised and updated its reporting guide to planespotting and tracking flights around the world.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Lessons from a Retracted Investigation in India: How to Avoid Fabricated Evidence
A recent Reuters Institute webinar dug into a highly embarrassing, retracted investigation by India’s The Wire and also laid out best practices for investigative newsrooms to avoid both deliberate and unintentional source errors.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
5 Tips for Using Academic Research in Investigative Journalism
Academic research is a crucial tool for investigating societal problems and holding the powerful accountable. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Neil Bedi, criminologist Rachel Lovell, and Denise-Marie Ordway of The Journalist’s Resource share practical advice on using academic research in investigative journalism.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Gauging the Impact of Your Journalism
Is measuring reach, attention, and engagement the same as measuring the impact of your journalism? The model and technology are not yet there to measure the real impact of a story on behavior and policy.
Guide Resource
Guide to Investigating Organized Crime in Africa
Organized crime is a global phenomenon. But Africa, with its deep-seated corruption and “resource curse,” is particularly hard hit.
Resource
Top 10 Guides and Tipsheets from GIJN’s Resource Center in 2022
From investigating elections around the world to tracking the fallout from the war in Ukraine to digging into organized crime in the Golden Triangle, here are the best guides and tipsheets from GIJN Resource Center’s in 2022.