Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/series/my-favorite-tools/page/2/)
This year, in our My Favorite Tools series, we asked 12 of the world’s top journalists what their go-to tools are. From VeraCrypt and OnionShare to Aleph and the Wayback Machine, here are GIJN’s favorites.
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke to Alberto Cairo, head of visualization at the University of Miami’s Institute for Data Science and Computing. Cairo shared several user-friendly tools and core principles to help investigative reporters shape their data visually to create new insights for audiences.
In the newest post of GIJN’s series “My Favorite Tools,” French-British journalist Olivier Holmey interviews Roman Anin, the 33-year-old founder and editor-in-chief of IStories, a nonprofit Russian investigative news site. Anin discusses how he has used import/export data from the UN, as well as encryption software and data cleaning applications, in his investigations.
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke to award-winning Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab, about the resources she uses to investigate disappearances in Mexico’s drug war. While information from victims’ families is paramount, she also shared insights on the value of open source tools, bank records, social media mining, and collaboration with nonprofit forensic teams in tracking the patterns behind the crisis.
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Sérgio Spagnuolo, founder and editor of the Brazilian data journalism agency Volt Data Lab. He has worked on disinformation and data verification before founding Volt, an independent journalism agency focused on investigating, analyzing, and visualizing data.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Craig Silverman, who leads a global beat on misinformation and media manipulation for BuzzFeed News. An author and award-winning journalist, Silverman shared some his top open source tools for digital investigations and for probing disinformation.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with AP’s Martha Mendoza, who has won Pulitzer prizes for her investigations on slavery in the fishing industry, and on a civilian massacre during the Korean War. She described some of the tools and methods she uses to investigate supply chains, including those that have led to shortages in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Katherine Eban, who has won awards for her work on gun trafficking, pharmaceutical counterfeits, and CIA interrogations. She described some of the low-tech tools and old-school strategies that have helped her break major stories on the COVID-19 pandemic.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with Barbara Maseda, the founder and editor of Proyecto Inventario, an open data platform for journalists reporting on her native Cuba. She told GIJN about the investigative tools she uses to overcome the difficulties of data reporting in and about Cuba.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with veteran American investigative reporter Ron Nixon. Now the global investigations editor for The Associated Press, Nixon shared the most important tools he uses for research, secure communications, and data analysis on many of his groundbreaking investigations.