My presentation to Wits Power Reporting Conference on the future of investigative reporting (as I imagine it) with some detail of what we have been doing at the Daily Dispatch

1. The view from a little newsroom

2.  The present is exciting – and the future is
thrilling
 Digital media give us a wonderful story-telling
platform and new tools to conduct our journalism
 Static, one-dimensional presentations of stories
evolve into multi-dimensional and sophisticated
packages which allow the reader or online user to
explore your own understanding of the truth
 New media is breathing new life into journalism –
and is making new styles of investigative
reporting possible
 With new media it is possible to amplify stories
like never before

3.  Daily Dispatch sort of stumbled onto a style
of investigation which has become our own
 For lack of a better term I call it “social
investigation”
 We have found that new media is not just an
important element of this story-telling – but
it is a cornerstone for it
 Our learning curve has been steep and
continues

4. Our timeline
 It’s a very short timeline: we haven’t been doing
this for terribly long at all
 Our approach has been to experiment – and try
and answer a few questions along the way
 Due to our own limited resources we use open
source or free web tools where ever possible
 We build our packages using Wordpress which is
easy to use 2011
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

5. July 2007:
Dispatch team broke Frere Baby Death
stories
Our first big investigation in years BUT
although we had shot sneaky video and
had other multi-media elements we had
never conceived or properly thought of
the online elements of the story
2011
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

6. 2008: At the beginning of 2008 we relaunched a
website which had a lot more functionality and
potential for us to do more interesting journalism.
Began a discussion in the newsroom around:
“How can we tell stories differently and better
using online tools and platform. How do we
move beyond offering video and pictures as
added value to what is essentially just print
journalism online”?
2011
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

7. End 2008/2009:
Began work on our Somali Dying
to Live (funded by Taco Kuiper
grant)
Was conceived from the
beginning as an online/print
project
And it turned out to be very
different from anything we had
done before
2011
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

8. March 2009: Reporters lived with Somali
refugees, blogging about their lives and
experiences, did powerful video interviews
and packages as well as slideshows.
For the first time we thought about the
2011
online story and its elements BEFORE we
began – and not after
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

9. March 2009:
Used timelines and maps
to add more to the story
All of these are free tools
on the web:
Dipity for timelines
Google Maps for the
maps
2011
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

10. July 2009:
Did another major
project looking at
the failure of
housing delivery
within the
province – again
conceived as an
online/print entity
from the
beginning.
A strong element of all of these projects has been
“living there”, really steeping ourselves in the story
and its material and then trying to make this material
live again for our readers
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

11. November 2009:
Investigation into slumlords in our
community which has involved
reporter living undercover for two
months in these slums. He has
identified some of the key slumlords
and has a pile of great material from
inside these hovels.
Will be our most sophisticated web
package yet
2007 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009 2010

12.  The heart of investigative reporting hasn’t
changed
 It’s still about a journalist working hard and
digging deep in a search for truth and
answering the same questions
 Online and new media tools give us powerful
story-telling techniques which make ALL
journalism better… but this is just the
beginning

13.  The future of investigative reporting – and
journalism – is here already
 Digital tools are opening up entirely new
areas of journalism – and there is a lot of
learning ahead
 Some of these techniques have been around
for decades but technology and the web is
allowing this potential to explode

14.  Three major new areas:
 1. Data visualisation as a mainstream
journalism tool
 2. GIS or geo-located information
 3. Crowd-sourcing: investigation and
collaborative work between users and news
professionals

15.  Once a hard-core science tool – now
becoming mainstream, easier to use and
access
 Many Eyes by IBM
 Google Fusion
 Swivel
 Adobe Flux and Flare open source

16. Data visualisation using Many Eyes to show TB deaths globally

19. Teenage pregnancy higher in US states where religion is
“very important” (Swivel chart)

20.  Huge possibilities for us to understand layers
of information and how it relates to a
geographic context
 Simple ways of using it and plenty of open
source technology
 Easiest is Google Maps but plenty of more
sophisticated stand-alone and open source
options

22.  Many obvious applications to give us great
story leads
 Crime stats versus household income
 Disease and illness stats in areas versus
public health spending etc
 Food prices layered on poverty stats – do the
poor pay more for food?
 These representations give us fresh starting
points for investigative reporting

23.  The Telegraph’s amazing investigation into
MPs expenses led to an enormous
crowdsourcing investigative reporting project
– by the Guardian

24.  Sites like HelpMeInvestigate recruits users
to assist make investigations possible and
produced a brilliant investigation into the
most ticketed streets in Birmingham
 Other models from Spot.Us brings readers in
by asking them to sponsor reporting
projects – community-funded reporting
 Potentially allows journalists to access
voices and sources like never before as well
as recruiting non-conventional partners in
our investigations

25.  My crystal ball shows me…..
 Data visualisation allows us to generate story
foundations and simply depict information
for readers
 GIS or mapping technologies allows us to see
nuances and relationships between
information and place
 Crowdsourcing brings armies of assistants
into play
 Online platforms allow us to tell deep and
media rich stories

26.  But the story only lives when reporters do
what they have always done…
 Getting their hands dirty, with old-fashioned
reporting out in the field