Guide Resource
GIJN’s Guide to Undercover Reporting
In countries without public record transparency rules or strong source protection laws, going undercover can be one of the few tools reporters have to reveal public interest stories.
Topic
Reporting Tools & Tips
562
posts
Reporting Tools & Tips
Tips for Investigating Football and the World Cup in Qatar
In this review of a recent GIJN webinar on investigating professional football, two senior journalists and a whistleblower discuss advice and tips for covering possible corruption and labor abuses tied to the upcoming 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Case Studies Reporting Tools & Tips
Aftenposten’s Housing Scandal Series Shook Norwegian Politics to Its Core
Aftenposten’s blockbuster investigative series uncovered widespread misconduct and tax evasion among Norway’s leading politicians, and was recognized with SKUP’s top award for investigative reporting.
Data Journalism Reporting Tools & Tips
5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance
This tipsheet helps journalists avoid some of the most common errors related to statistcal significance in academic studies, which even trained researchers sometimes make.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Q & A: Investigating TikTok Content Across the Russia-Ukraine Border
To investigate what the Russian invasion looked like to TikTok users in Russia and Ukraine, and how the content available differed from one side of the border to the other, a team of journalists from the Norwegian broadcasting company NRK set out to investigate the social networking site’s algorithms and how a user’s location provides differing digital narratives about the war.
Guide Resource
GIJN’s Guide to Investigating Sea Level Rise
For journalists, explaining the causes and consequences of rising sea levels is a critical and challenging assignment.
Resource Tipsheet
Tips for Optimizing Google Search in Investigations, from Online Expert Henk van Ess
At a recent GIJN online workshop, open source research expert Henk van Ess offered key tips and techniques for optimizing the use of Google search in your investigations.
Resource Tipsheet
Free, Game-Changing Data Extraction Tools that Require No Coding Skills
In this edition of GIJN Toolbox, we examine the latest advancements from the IRE22 conference on data extraction and optical character recognition (OCR) tools for turning unwieldy documents into searchable spreadsheets.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Investigative Masterclass: Tips from Mediapart’s Fabrice Arfi
Mediapart’s co-director of investigations, self-taught journalist Fabrice Arfi, offers his tips and best practices for educating oneself, cultivating sources, confronting targets fairly, and avoiding legal trouble.
Case Studies Reporting Tools & Tips
How the Financial Times Exposed a Billion-Dollar Fraud
How do you tackle a fraudulent blue-chip corporation that has the means to deploy teams of lawyers, private investigators, hackers, and even foreign spies to stop your investigation? Dan McCrum, an investigative reporter at the Financial Times, told GIJN how he took down a fraudulent $30 billion company, and offered tips on how reporters can tackle bad actors with almost unlimited resources.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Megha Rajagopalan: What I’ve Learned About Investigative Journalism
Megha Rajagopalan has reported from over 23 countries in Asia and the Middle East, on stories ranging from the North Korean nuclear crisis to the peace process in Afghanistan. Her team’s investigation into prison camps in Xinjiang, China won a Pulitzer Prize. In this podcast, she discusses how she got into investigative journalism and gives her tips for speaking to vulnerable sources.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Global Lessons from Exposing War Abuses in Yemen
Open source tools like the Yemeni Archive have allowed investigative journalists to track the impact of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in the Yemen civil war as well as identify Western allies’ role in possible war crimes or abuses.
Methodology Reporting Tools & Tips
Using Satellites to Reveal the Burning of the UK’s Protected Moorlands
How Greenpeace’s investigative site, Unearthed, used satellite imagery and database mapping to reveal hundreds of fires on environmentally protected land in the English moors – including dozens that could be illegal.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
10 Tips for Using Geolocation and Open Source Data to Fuel Investigations
Speaking at IJF22, Centre for Information Resilience investigations director Ben Strick offered 10 tips for integrating geolocation and open source data in investigative journalism.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Q&A with Rosental Alves: New Models, Digital Media, and the Backlash in Latin America
GIJN spoke with International Symposium on Online Journalism founder, Rosental Alves, about the growing backlash against independent media in Latin America.
Resource
Remote Sensing and Data Tools for Environmental Investigations
This edition of the GIJN Toolbox explores global databases and remote sensing resources that reporters can use to investigate local environmental threats.
Resource
How Journalists Can Investigate on Telegram
Telegram is an invaluable research tool, helping journalists mine for information, investigate groups of people whose content is otherwise banned or limited on social media, and track protests and political movements in authoritarian countries. Here’s how to get started using it.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Investigative Tips for Following the Cryptocurrency Trail
There is one key reason why reporters should start learning about cryptocurrencies, according to the OCCRP’s Jan Strozyk, and that is because their investigative targets are already using them to hide their crimes and finance their future operations.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
Five Ways to Stay Online During a Government Internet Shutdown
Shutting down the internet has become an increasingly common tactic of governments and regimes looking to prevent civil society and free media from operating. Here, experts in privacy and security give their advice on the tools and tactics for skirting internet blackouts.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Video Resources for Mapping, Satellites, Storytelling, Testing, Tracking, and Disinformation
To share best practices from our most recent global conference, GIJC21, we are releasing a series of videos from the event’s many seminars, panels, and workshops. This latest installment focuses on investigative tips and tools for using satellite imagery, flight tracking, and exposing disinformation.
News & Analysis Reporting Tools & Tips
‘Reporting from the Outside’: Lessons from Investigative Journalists in Exile
Many autocracy-displaced media have managed to navigate surviving outside their home country with varying degrees of success. In a series of interviews with GIJN, exiled news leaders from around the world offer some best practices and lessons learned from their own experiences.
Resource
10 Lessons from Bellingcat’s Logan Williams on Digital Forensic Techniques
Bellingcat’s Logan Williams, who presented a panel on digital forensic reporting labs at the 2022 International Journalism Festival 2022 in Perugia, Italy, gives his top tips for journalists interested in open source digital investigations.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Video Resources for Investigative Journalism Safety and Security
To share best practices and other lessons learned from our most recent global conference, GIJC21, we are releasing a series of videos from the event’s many seminars, panels, and workshops. This latest installment focuses on reporter safety, digital security, and source protection.
Guide Resource
GIJN’s Elections Guide for Investigative Reporters
This guide offers a broad array of tools, techniques, and resources — beyond the primary local sources you find — to help watchdog reporters dig into almost any election.
Case Studies Reporting Tools & Tips
Tips for Investigative Reporters from Winners of the Goldsmith Prize
Two Washington Post reporters discuss how they overcame obstacles, talked to hesitant sources, and built their own datasets to investigate failures at the agency that manages disasters in the United States, offering their tips for other reporters in the process.
Reporting Tools & Tips Safety & Security
Why Source Protection Begins With Your Smartphone Contacts
In an era when an investigative reporter’s contacts are often all stored on their smartphone or in the cloud, digital security best practices are paramount to protect your sources.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Video Resources for Health, Women, Podcasts, & Indigenous Issues
To share best practices and other lessons learned from our most recent global conference, GIJC21, we are releasing a series of videos from the event’s many seminars, panels, and workshops. This latest installment focuses on key issues like health and medicine, women’s leadership, investigative podcasts, and Indigenous reporting.
Data Journalism Reporting Tools & Tips
Video Resources for Data Investigations
To share best practices and other lessons learned from our most recent global conference, GIJC21, we are releasing a series of videos from the event’s many seminars, panels, and workshops. The second installment focuses on how investigative reporters can better utilize data tools and visualization techniques.