GIJN's Substack: How They Investigated

GIJN serves as the international hub and resource center for the world’s investigative reporters. And our new Substack, "How They Investigated" takes you behind the scenes of investigations across the globe.

What tools and techniques are investigative journalists around the world using to do their jobs?

By unearthing the methods and tools used in investigations, GIJN's new monthly Substack newsletter, “How They Investigated,” aims to provide valuable insights to help inspire and fuel your next story.

Every day, GIJN works in more than a dozen languages to link together the world’s most enterprising journalists, giving them the tools, technology, and training to go after abuses of power and lack of accountability. Therefore, all of GIJN’s resources, including this newsletter, are available for free.

However, if you are interested in becoming a paid subscriber your contribution will go toward supporting our efforts to provide free training and resources for investigative journalists.

Here's what you've missed so far and a glimpse of what's to come:

How They Did It: Investigating the Pylos Shipwreck

In the early hours of the morning of June 14, 2023, a small fishing trawler carrying hundreds of migrants sank off the coast of Pylos, Greece. Roughly 600 people died in what has become one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in recent years. Just shy of a year later, a Greek court dismissed charges against nine survivors accused of causing the shipwreck.

Read more here.

‘Smoke and Lies’: How Visual Forensics Disproved Official Accounts of a Deadly Migrant Center Fire

In March 2023, 40 people, locked in a cell in a temporary detention center in Ciudad Juarez, asphyxiated in a fire — one of the deadliest incidents in a government-run migrant detention facility in Mexico's history. Twenty-seven others suffered permanent damage, including amputations, lung damage, and PTSD.

At the IPI World Congress, journalists from GIJN member Lighthouse Reports shared how their cross-border team reconstructed what happened and investigated who was accountable for the deaths and injuries that occurred.

Read more here.

How Reporting From Six Years Ago Exposed a Political Fundraising Scandal That Rocked India’s Elections

Tomorrow, Friday, August 15, the third installment of "How They Investigated" will be released, featuring a first-person account on how digging deeper into India's electoral bonds led to the exposé of one of the nation's biggest political scandals in a decade.

Subscribe now to be one of the first to read.

Want to Write for GIJN?

Send a brief pitch — including a working headline, what the story is about, who you’ll talk with, and why you are the person to write it — along with links to recent work samples and a bio or CV to [email protected].

Pitches should have international relevance and should be in English. Though for the right piece, we’ll always find assistance with translation and edits with help from one of our dozen regional editors. More details here.

Interested in more news from GIJN?

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