An interactive session designed to demonstrate what readers (including you) see in charts and infographics, and what you might need to do to make your message clearer
In a world where history may sometimes seem busy repeating itself, the ability to find your way around traditional paper archives is increasingly useful. Whether it’s war, genocide, the Cold War or the environment: historical stories are becoming more and more – well – current.
In this session we’ll show you how to transfer data and OSINT skills to working with paper and historical records. We will explain how to find stories in the material and how to find both historical and current sources. We’ll show you some – hopefully – inspiring examples, and we’ll discuss why it’s not smart to accidentally download 500,000 records from the National Archives.
No previous knowledge and no additional materials (e.g. laptop) are required for this session.
Today, bad data holds the power to distort reality, spread misinformation, and manipulate public opinion. This session dives deep into how inaccurate, incomplete, and even deliberately manipulated data fuels the growth of information disorder. Participants will learn how to spot and verify flawed data, understand its far-reaching impact on trust in the media, and explore practical strategies to combat its spread.
As the gap between journalists and the public continues to grow, how can investigative newsrooms convince people that they still matter? “Impact journalism” may be one solution. For six months, Disclose and Rembobine, two independent news organisations from France, have been collecting best practices from newsrooms around the world to monitor, assess and evaluate the echoes of their investigations. Their brand new guide to impact journalism, based on 30 interviews with researchers, editors and impact producers, will be published at Dataharvest. Impact provides not only room for hope, but also a promising approach to increasing reader loyalty and foundation support.
This is probably one the most common nightmares for any journalist: you’ve been working for months on an ambitious investigation and, once published, it results in… nothing. To mitigate this, it’s time to develop effective impact strategies, tailored to your newsroom and your resources. During this participatory workshop, inspired by popular education techniques, we will collectively build a realistic impact plan for your next investigation. Whether it involves partnering with stakeholders, getting support from activists or building new editorial formats, we’ll look at several techniques for maximising the reach of your revelations and ensuring they produce impact in the real world.
Private finance data aggregators are a powerful - if often expensive - tool for understanding the investment and ownership structures of the funds or companies that are the subject of your investigation. With the right approach, they can also help generate stories by identifying suspicious or controversial flows of money. This sessions shows you how. We will share a case study from a recent series that revealed supposedly ethical public pension funds held investments in controversial businesses - including tankers for Russian fossil fuels and crypto, all via opaque private equity intermediaries.
With traditional revenue streams under strain, independent media outlets are turning to innovative models that combine grants, memberships, subscriptions, events, and more. But how does this approach work in practice? What challenges come with balancing diverse income sources? This session explores the ethics, sustainability, and practicalities of mixed funding. How can outlets develop a long-term strategy while navigating financial and ethical dilemmas? Join us to discuss the opportunities and pitfalls of funding independent journalism in today’s landscape.
In the last decade or so, podcasts have gone from being niche to becoming a widespread media format and are now a well established and mature medium. Podcasts bring about their own kinds of opportunities and challenges, and, from the point of view of storytelling, seem to be particularly suited to long reportage and investigations.
In this session, we'll hear from two journalists with experience in producing independent investigative podcasts in two different parts of Europe: Portugal and Poland.
How do journalists and newsrooms think of topics for an investigative podcast? What are the key editorial and non-editorial issues to consider? And the main pros and cons for independent newsrooms that want to produce investigative podcasts? How to conduct interviews about complicated issues and get people to be candid on the record? How to narrate investigations that rely on documents and can include complex, abstract issues? What are the lessons learnt after trying things that didn't work out that well?
