Member Profiles

The Tunisian Journalists Who Built a Business Model That Frees Them to Investigate

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Following the 2011 Tunisian revolution, the loosening of free speech created a vibrant marketplace of ideas but investigative reporting still lagged. A group of Tunisian journalists set out to change this by founding independent media outlet Inkyfada, which has experimented with data and audio storytelling and worked hard to diversify its revenue in order to guard its independence. Layli Foroudi profiled Inkyfada for GIJN.

audio

3 Investigative Podcasts You Need in Your Life

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Since the launch of Serial in 2014, podcast popularity has soared. And an increasing number of investigative journalists have begun aiming for ears as well as eyeballs. At the Uncovering Asia 2018 conference in Seoul, sound experts shared their recommendations on must-hear investigative storytelling.

accountability

How to Make Audiences Love Good Journalism

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Changing the way accountability stories are written takes research, preparation, listening and even a bit of psychology. In an excerpt from from a recent American Press Institute report, here are some recommendations from experts about persuasion and communications — as well as examples from news organizations that are using non-narrative, data and visual elements to make the best of journalism better for audiences.

Abdul Salam

How Pakistani Journalists Subvert Danger — and the Narrative — with Data

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Journalists exposing corruption in countries with limited rule of law face enormous risks and their stories may not necessarily make things better for anyone. In Pakistan, journalists have employed a different — and safer — approach to trigger positive change by avoiding front-page corruption exposés and using data journalism to expose flaws in the system instead. A GIJN original.

data journalism

Why We Need To Tell Stories

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So you’ve amassed terabytes of data, reams of documents and hours of expert testimony, all backing up your conclusions. What’s the best way to convince people you’re right?

Tell them a story.

Ideally, a compelling, colorful tale weaving in memorable anecdotes and striking details. Printed in a clear, legible font. Oh, and it helps – no kidding – if it rhymes.

At least according to Nobel-prizewinning economist Daniel Kahneman, author of the outstanding Thinking, Fast and Slow, who’s made a career out of understanding – experimentally – how our brains take in information and make decisions. It isn’t always pretty, but it does help explain why storytelling is a centuries-old means of passing on information.

Data Journalism

GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Rio’s Militias, OCCRP’s Database and Brexit’s Brits

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 2 to 8 finds an alarming piece by @iamdylancurran on how much data Facebook and Google have actually gleaned from us, @OCCRP’s powerful database of public records and leaks, @davidottewell’s take on the evolution of data journalism and an investigation by @TheInterceptBr into the militias in Rio de Janeiro.

Data Journalism

GIJN’s Data Journalism Top 10: Racing Snails, Presidential Gifts and Berlin’s Building Blocks

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 21 to 27 finds @nigelblue’s wildly humorous infographic book about crazy competitions across the globe, @Data_Match breaks down the list of gifts given to the president of the United States by foreign leaders and @FinancialTimes looks into the pressures Antarctica faces.

Data Journalism

Data Journalism’s Top Ten

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What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from August 7 to 13 has @UpshotNYT plotting Game of Thrones characters in two dimensions, @paulbradshaw offering 10 principles for data journalism and data journalists at a @dagstuhl workshop with narrative patterns for data-driven storytelling.

storytelling

A New Era for Storytelling

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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.