Áine Kelly-​Costello: Here’s what I learned when the muck­ra­kers united

Áine Kelly-​Costello ist Jour­na­listin aus Aote­aroa (Neu­see­land), der­zeit stu­diert sie Inves­ti­ga­tive Jour­na­lism an der Uni­ver­sität Göte­borg. In fol­gendem Bei­trag beschreibt sie, wie sie die 11. Global Inves­ti­ga­tive Jour­na­lism Con­fe­rence als blinde Teil­neh­merin erlebt hat:

I stood or sat, phone in hand note-​taking or exchan­ging con­tact info, in a sea of repor­ters lis­te­ning to each other. I per­ched on cramped ben­ches, some­times on the floor, a chair if I was more punc­tual and decisive than usual about ses­sion sel­ec­tion.

There we were, 1700 inves­ti­ga­tive jour­na­lists, aca­de­mics, non-​profit direc­tors, stu­dents, others con­nected to the field, con­ver­ging into a notice­ably finite amount of space. The vibe was dis­con­cer­tingly fri­endly, and net­wor­king ses­sions were time­tabled in for you. I some­times remem­bered to eat.

In the blur of four days in Ham­burg at the 11th Global Inves­ti­ga­tive Jour­na­lism Con­fe­rence, here’s a snapshot of what jumped out for me.

1. Col­la­bo­ra­tion is the future. It’s also a tangle of logi­stics

Col­la­bo­ra­tion was a buzz-​word, and I think it con­tri­buted to the sense of open­ness, and the lack of hier­archy that came across during the con­fe­rence. As a blind jour­na­list, col­la­bo­ra­tion is more a sur­vival stra­tegy than a nice idea for me, so this literal assu­rance that I was not alone was encou­ra­ging.

Ses­sions for net­wor­king, as well as col­la­bo­ra­tive stra­te­gies, bet­ween jour­na­lists and NGOs, locally, cross-​border, and global fea­tured pro­mi­nently. Stra­tegic tips, para­phrased by me, included:

• Make time to sit down and systematically work out what’s in it for each partner, clearly and early
• Make your data open but user-friendly
• Assign/resource a project coordinator

Also, if you can help it:

• Don’t accidentally have two partners talking to two anonymous sources who alarmingly turn out to be exactly the same source
• Don’t move the publication date you agreed upon
• Don’t forget to be vigilant of the factors that concern your partners e.g. print magazine deadlines are sooner than digital, logistics of getting sources already talked to by print onto camera for TV, press freedom restrictions in many countries.

2. What’s kee­ping you awake at night?

It was also reas­su­ring to see veri­fi­ca­tion and fact-​che­cking play a cen­tral role in the pre­sen­ta­tion line-​up. Edi­tors, we heard, who are satis­fied that repor­ters have indi­vi­du­ally fact-​che­cked them­selves wit­hout seeing proof aren’t being thorough about their job. For inves­ti­ga­tive repor­ting in par­ti­cular, that should mean resour­cing line-​by-​line che­cking of sto­ries, and also frame-​by-​frame if there’s a visual com­po­nent.

But, Nils Hanson from SVT (Swe­dish Public Tele­vi­sion) advised, once you’re done with that, there’s one more ques­tion a vigi­lent editor can pose to the reporter (I may be para­phra­sing slightly):

“What’s that nag­ging detail kee­ping you awake at night?”

3. Try the thing that didn’t work two years ago

Sage advice that was true for many orga­ni­sa­tions at a par­ti­cular time in a par­ti­cular place is worth lis­te­ning to, but making time for regular, con­sidered expe­ri­menting pays off, too.

This was a tip from Monika Bau­erlein, CEO of Ame­rican long-​form Maga­zine Mother Jones. She said that against-​the-​grain stra­te­gies from wri­ting longer-​than-​advised emails to rea­ders, to revi­si­ting Face­book and Twitter fund-​rai­sing in 2019, have paid off for the maga­zine. She also empha­sised that rea­ders were far more wil­ling to give the maga­zine much-​needed money when the orga­ni­sa­tion was open about its stra­tegy and ratio­nale for pur­suing reader-​funded inde­pen­dent, well-​resourced repor­ting on prio­rity topic areas.

4. Not the con­tent, the meta­data

Edward Snowden’s leaks, six years ago, revealed the poten­tial signi­ficance of meta­data to the world. I wasn’t really paying atten­tion then, but when Paul Meyers of the BBC demons­trated just how traceable even a photo’s meta­data is (where taken, when, by what device etc.), I natu­rally feel more stalked by my own phone. The intended mes­sage, no doubt, was to not unde­re­sti­mate what you may find hiding in meta­data should you decide to comb some during an inves­ti­ga­tion, along with prac­tical tips for doing that.

5. Recipro­city beats beg­ging. Also, read obscure jour­nals

I’m likely to free­lance some­time in the near future, whe­ther by acci­dent or design, making me a sponge for prac­tical advice on the matter of how to get a foo­thold.

Saudi free­lancer Safa al Ahmad pointed out that if you’ve helped someone out in the past, they’re a lot more likely to remember you. Obviously, there are ethical and unethical ways of giving help, but kee­ping in mind that your dinner con­ver­sa­tion mate now might just be your future col­la­bo­rator or editor is in your self-​inte­rest.

Ano­ther spe­aker, I think it was Mark Scha­piro from UC Ber­keley, advised fin­ding a rather obscure niche, and updating yourself regu­larly within that niche – rea­ding jour­nals, court-​cases, any­thing. that sounds like a sen­sible way of spot­ting angles the rest of the world’s free­lan­cers might not have seen yet.

6. Tal­king to the camera

In a ses­sion on inter­view tech­ni­ques, veteran repor­ters Cheryl Thompson of NPR and Scott Zamost of CNBC both ham­mered home the need for honesty and buil­ding trust with sources, espe­cially for encou­ra­ging them to talk on camera. Also, Zamost added, it’s worth che­cking why, exactly, they may be so reluc­tant to talk to you; it might have little to do with the sub­ject matter and a lot to do with how they think they look on camera.

Thompson also had two other tips:

• Ask one question at a time; if you don’t, the interviewee will pick the easiest one
• Silence is golden; if you make a habit of interrupting your interviewees, you’ll often never know what potential insights you missed

7. Loo­king for the human angles on cli­mate break­down? Ask the com­mu­nities most affected

This shouldn’t be news­worthy advice by 2019, but I think it bears repea­ting, espe­cially as it’s a mes­sage I’ve seen struggle to break out of cam­pai­gning bubbles into main­stream repor­ting. From the Democratic Repu­blic of Congo to Bolivia to the (Nor­we­gian) Arctic, pre­sen­ters empha­sised the need for more cli­mate sto­ries centred on people and com­mu­nities. That means sto­ries about impacts, but also about crea­tive but necessary forms of adap­ting, where we find and pro­file those new ways of living.

8. #Hold­The­Line: An attack on one is an attack on all

This hashtag was the ral­lying cry of the Con­fe­rence key­note, deli­vered by Phil­ip­pine reporter Maria Ressa.

Ressa, CEO and Exe­cu­tive Editor of Phil­ip­pines news site Rappler, speaks from an epi­centre of such attacks, having herself been turned into a prime target through her una­po­lo­getic coverage of the drug war and pro-​Duterte pro­pa­ganda.

“I have done nothing but be a jour­na­list,” she reminded around 1700 jour­na­lists that night—”I have com­mitted no crime.”

“Our battle is your battle,” she con­ti­nued.

“Pro­tect the rights gua­ran­teed by our democra­cies or watch them slowly erode in plain sight. This is the challenge for all of us today … What can we put in place today to pro­tect our tomor­rows?”

9. The women behind the repor­ting

The most powerful ses­sion I went to, the one that was about fin­ding vul­nera­bi­lity and soli­da­rity and cou­rage, was called sur­vival stra­te­gies for Women Muck­ra­kers. Ten award-​win­ning women inves­ti­ga­tive repor­ters told us about their per­sonal expe­ri­ences. They talked about the burn-​out that they spent years not tal­king about, being a working mother, taking your own secu­rity seriously when no one is resour­cing it, proces­sing covering vio­lence when men con­f­late emo­tional reac­tions with weak­ness, inves­ti­ga­ting your own rape, and a lot more.

The ses­sion ope­rated from the pre­mise that it’s not just the tools and tech­ni­ques that we learn from, it’s also how we, as humans (as opposed to, say, com­pu­ters) handle actually doing all the stuff we’re tal­king about. Obviously this time the focus was on the shared expe­ri­ence of being a woman. But I believe con­side­ring this streak of sha­ring human lear­nings as an inte­gral com­po­nent of the con­fe­rence in future has the poten­tial to create more trust, closer bonds, and better inves­ti­ga­tive repor­ters. It’s about lever­aging tools to build each other up while sho­wing us what nur­tu­ring well-​being, resi­li­ence and soli­da­rity looks like.

10. Not just tur­ning up: full par­ti­ci­pa­tion means plan­ning and care

I have a vague idea about how hard the three Con­fe­rence orga­nising part­ners, and numerous vol­un­teers, worked to make the Con­fe­rence truly global, a great net­wor­king oppor­tu­nity, and appea­ling to a variety of inte­rest areas within IJ.

Here I’ll zone in on my own expe­ri­ence. When I emailed the orga­nisers to find out if vol­un­teers could show me, as a blind attendee, bet­ween venues and where the food was, they sug­gested I could bring someone with me to the con­fe­rence for that pur­pose. So I went with my friend and class­mate Ari­adna, and, apart from her astute obser­va­tional skills which will make her a won­derful inves­ti­ga­tive reporter in her own right, I seriously would have strug­gled wit­hout someone else loo­king after the logi­stical side of figu­ring out the bus+train+wal­king from accom­mo­da­tion to Con­fe­rence, and the logi­stics of get­ting bet­ween the mul­tiple Con­fe­rence and meet-​up venues. Wit­hout that help, it wouldn’t have been impos­sible to par­ti­ci­pate, but the logi­stical side would have been drai­ning and time-​con­suming.

Tech­no­logy, in the form of the Con­fe­rence app Whova, was also extre­mely bene­fi­cial, par­ti­cu­larly for con­tac­ting other atten­dees. Whova wasn’t enti­rely screen-​reader acces­sible, but its digital net­wor­king powers were still signi­fi­cant.

I’ve pro­vided Con­fe­rence feed­back about the impor­tance of plan­ning for acces­si­bi­lity within all aspects of the event orga­nising, as well as making space for dis­abi­lity-​related repor­ting topics and net­wor­king within the main pro­gramme, within a stronger diver­sity and equity focus lead by mar­gi­na­lised jour­na­lists. A reduced regis­tra­tion fee for stu­dent atten­dees and others from low-​income back­grounds within coun­tries not eli­gible for travel sub­si­dies would equally have been wel­come.

So there is space to improve, I won’t sugar-​coat that. But the orga­nisers’ com­mit­ment to faci­li­ta­ting a truly fri­endly, non-​hier­ar­chical-​fee­ling envi­ron­ment where inves­ti­ga­tive jour­na­lists and others con­nected to the field could learn from each other and spread ideas was lau­dable. I have the respon­si­bi­lity to be a more astute, careful, crea­tive, patient and cou­ra­geous reporter as a result.

Die Erst­ver­öf­fent­li­chung dieses Textes erfolgte auf dem Blog von Áine Kelly-​Costello .

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