Discussing and sharing good practices in investigative reporting project management

Time: June 6, Tues­day, 2023 at 11:00 – 12:30 (CET)

Reg­is­ter at https://forms.gle/NYKqMAtMyfQNuaHQA by June 2, Fri­day, 2023.
You will receive a link to the event at the email you pro­vid­ed when you reg­is­tered no lat­er than 5th June.

The pro­duc­tion of in-depth and fact-based inves­tiga­tive sto­ries requires a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time and resources on behalf of inde­pen­dent media out­lets. In that respect, news­rooms and inves­tiga­tive report­ing teams face numer­ous dilem­mas:

How to select top­ics and sto­ries which have been matured for a prop­er inquiry?

When to drop a project idea because in the process of research the sub­ject has turned out not to be so rel­e­vant, cer­tain con­di­tions are hin­der­ing appro­pri­ate fact-check­ing or the inves­ti­ga­tion would not lead to the antic­i­pat­ed results?

How to con­duct a pre­lim­i­nary query?

What kinds of tools are to be applied (e.g. request of data of pub­lic inter­est, big data analy­sis, in-depth inter­views, back­ground dis­cus­sions, obser­va­tion of sub­jects and venues)?

What research  meth­ods may work in an inim­i­cal polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment?

What are the most effi­cient ways of desk­top research and field work?

How to put togeth­er a sto­ry line and present the out­come in order to out­reach a wider audi­ence?

Among oth­er issues these ques­tions will be tack­led at the work­shop to be led by sea­soned Hun­gar­i­an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist, András Pethő. The par­tic­i­pants will be asked to select and briefly present (in 3 min­utes) an inves­tiga­tive sto­ry they or their news­rooms have worked on.

András Pethő is a co-founder, edi­tor and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Direkt36. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was a senior edi­tor for lead­ing Hun­gar­i­an news site Ori­go before it had been trans­formed into the government’s pro­pa­gan­da out­let. He also worked for the BBC World Ser­vice in Lon­don and was a reporter at the inves­tiga­tive unit of The Wash­ing­ton Post. He has con­tributed to sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al report­ing projects, includ­ing The Pana­ma Papers. He twice won the Soma Prize, the pres­ti­gious annu­al award ded­i­cat­ed to inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism in Hun­gary. He was a World Press Insti­tute fel­low in 2008, a Humphrey fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land in 2012/13, and a Nie­man fel­low at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty in 2019/20. András has taught jour­nal­ism cours­es at Hun­gar­i­an uni­ver­si­ties.

Direkt36 is a non-prof­it inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism cen­ter in Hun­gary with the mis­sion to expose wrong­do­ings and abuse of pow­er through fair but tough report­ing, a kind of jour­nal­ism that is vital for any democ­ra­cy. The cen­ter pro­vides the Hun­gar­i­an and inter­na­tion­al audi­ence with in-depth account­abil­i­ty report­ing that most of the Hun­gar­i­an media out­lets do not have the resources to pur­sue. Direkt36 is not part of the com­pe­ti­tion of news orga­ni­za­tions cov­er­ing dai­ly events, which allows us to focus our resources exclu­sive­ly on con­duct­ing sys­tem­at­ic inves­ti­ga­tions. Direkt36 active­ly par­tic­i­pates in the work of a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism com­mu­ni­ty and pub­lish­es all of their sto­ries also in Eng­lish. Some of their recent arti­cles dealt in depth with Hun­gar­i­an-Pol­ish and Hun­gar­i­an-Russ­ian rela­tions. See:

https://www.direkt36.hu/en/igy-haragitotta-magara-orban-viktor-a-legkozelebbi-baratait/

https://www.direkt36.hu/en/kiszivargott-hogyan-mentette-offshore-milliardjait-a-szankciok-elott-a-budapesti-orosz-bank-vezere/

https://www.direkt36.hu/en/meszarosek-nemreg-meg-besegitettek-az-orosz-banknak-ahonnan-kilepett-az-orban-kormany/

Cen­ter for Inde­pen­dent Jour­nal­ism (CIJ) was estab­lished by the New York based Inde­pen­dent Jour­nal­ism Foun­da­tion in 1995. Since then CIJ has sought to sup­port pub­lic inter­est jour­nal­ism and aimed at con­tribut­ing to a media envi­ron­ment where free­dom of expres­sion and free­dom of the press were pro­tect­ed and pro­mot­ed. CIJ con­tin­ues to work on this mis­sion to demon­strate the mer­its and good prac­tices of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism. It orga­nizes work­shops, con­fer­ences, round­table dis­cus­sions, con­sul­ta­tions for media pro­fes­sion­als. Fur­ther­more, the Cen­ter imple­ments men­tor­ing and intern­ship pro­grams, facil­i­tates pro­fes­sion­al dia­logue via events and exchange, pro­vides report­ing grants to jour­nal­ists, and par­tic­i­pates in inter­na­tion­al media devel­op­ment and mul­ti­me­dia con­tent pro­duc­tion projects.