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African Journalism Unit Focuses on Environmental Threats

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Endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, the oxpecker bird clings on to large mammals, feeding off the ticks, flies and other pests found on their hosts hide.“We aim to do the same with the world body,” says oxpeckers.org founder Fiona Mcleod, making one of the 150 panel presentations at the Global Investigative Journalists Conference (GIJC2013) this week in Rio de Janeiro. In this instance, however, the parasites she plans to identify and destroy are criminal poachers, such as those destroying African rhinos.

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An Infusion of Transparency in the Arab World

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Rana Sabbagh, executive director of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) could not be prouder.This past weekend she had the opportunity to present the work of her association at the four-day Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio de Janiero, which because it has drawn more than 1,300 journalists from 89 nations is being called “The World Cup of investigative journalism”.
During a session dedicated to “The state of global investigative journalism,” this prominent Jordanian journalist described several ground-breaking, undercover investigations executed in the Arab world.

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Meet Your New Best Friend: Hackers Aid Digital Journalists

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Hackers are journalists’ new best friends. They source, scrape, and program data – so reporters can uncover stories that might not otherwise be revealed. And slowly, they’re carving out a place in the assembly line of journalism, according to Miguel Paz, a journalist and founder of Poderopedia (http://www.poderopedia.org/), a website that exposes the relationships between the business and political world in Chile using publicly available dataHackers and computer geeks have to be your best friend he said, because “[they] know how to do things that you don’t know…You need that person and he needs you because you as a journalist….make good questions. Of course I know how to scrape and get the data out but what do i do with it? That’s where you come in.”

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Facebook, el Amigo Detective

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Aunque la compañía o persona que estamos investigando sea escurridiza y cautelosa, buscadores y redes sociales pueden llevarnos rápidamente al rastro de nuestro objetivo, al de sus amigos o al de quien tuitea junto a él. Paul Myers se ha consolidado como un experto en búsquedas en Internet y durante el workshop “Rastreando las redes sociales” mostró cómo encontrar lo que nunca conseguiríamos en una simple pesquisa en Google.

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Investigating the Environment to Solve a Murder Mystery

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Mark Schapiro’s job is to prevent murders. He is not a cop, nor a judge or a psychological counselor. Actually, Schapiro is an award-winning environmental journalist. Years ago, when Schapiro was collaborating with law enforcement officials in charge of enforcing environmental crimes, it dawned on him: “Whether the murder of an ecological system that supports us, or really, literally, a killing,” Schapiro says, “the core of environmental journalism is investigating murder and stopping it in the future.”

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Persecutions of International Investigative Journalists

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Immediately after the Global Investigative Reporters Conference (GIJC2013) opened for four-days of meetings this weekend, the first showcase panel assembled to just how dangerous it has become to speak truth to power. Investigative reporters and editors from Jordan, Peru, England and South Africa discussed their current projects and the dangers facing investigative journalist in their parts of the world.

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Los Retos del Periodismo de Investigación en México

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Es mucho lo que se dice sobre el periodismo de investigación en México. Que pocos periodistas quieren desarrollarse en esta área, que si es un “lujo” de algunos medios que cuentan con dinero suficiente o que es ahora, cuando algunos de los periodistas mexicanos están recibiendo el reconocimiento que merecen, incluso de manera internacional, como la periodista Alejandra Xanic, quién se ganó el Pulitzer con su investigación sobre las prácticas corruptas de Walmart en México.

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GIJC13 Day 1: Back Together Again

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The Global Investigative Journalism Conference has taken off! It was a great first day, packed with panels, meetings, networking, and warm Brazilian hospitality. Here’s a takeaway from the first day of the conference, our own “World Cup of Investigative Journalism.”

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Investigative Journalism Key Measure of Democracy Health

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A democracy is measured by its citizens’ ability to speak freely, Catalina Botera, special rapporteur for freedom of expression at the Organization of American States, said yesterday during the opening plenary at the eighth biennial Global Investigative Journalism Conference. “Half the population doesn’t live in a democracy. The other avatar.jpg.75x75px50 percent struggle to protect freedom of speech,” she said. “In the alleged democracies, the thermometer is free speech. And investigation journalism is the mercury. Only if we protect investigative journalists can we say we live in a democracy.”

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Delivering Muckrakers’ Tales Without the Advertisers

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Establishing new avenues for digging-in and delivering on the muckraker’s craft is a double-edged sword: freeing investigative journalists from kowtowing to advertisers but requiring that they navigate through some lean times. “The commercial model has been: make money from advertising. And you rarely go after your own advertisers,” longtime investigative journalist Charles Lewis told a packed room on Saturday in a panel discussion on successful business models at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC13). “Most media models function from advertising. You could see their ads.