Last week I spoke at the Wits Power Reporting Conference on investigative reporting where I was asked to share some thoughts on a possible future for investigative reporting and the new media tools which we may use. I sketched out something of the work we have been doing at the Dispatch and then imagined some future possibilities.
Essentially, I see three exciting technologies and methods becoming central to journalism in general and investigative journalism in particular. They are data visualisation, GIS or geo-located news, and crowdsourcing. All three of these areas have become personal obsessions of mine and I’m spending many, many hours of my personal time studying them and thinking of their potential application in our work at the Dispatch. Watch this space!
Anyway, if you are interested, I have embedded my presentation below.
I’ve been invited to speak about the future of investigative reporting next week at Wit’s University’s Power Reporting conference organised by that institution’s journalism department.
It’s a great conference with plenty of big names from around South Africa and the world offering their thoughts on the investigative reporting business. The Dispatch will be well represented there having done pretty well recently with some reporting in this field.
I believe the Dispatch has found its own voice in investigative reporting which is relatively unique in the world. Other journalists often ask about how we have executed some recent projects and I always say that what we have done is not rocket science – but a lot of hard work.
We are doing what journalists have always done. Read the rest of this entry »
