GIJC21 Sessions

Get to know your first programming language using simple verbs and nouns in a powerful language that can handle large public records databases and cleanse ugly spreadsheets. Using R and R Studio for reporting has grown in newsrooms and has become one of the standards in the growing trend of reproducible research in data journalism and visualization. This session will introduce you to some of the capabilities of R and leave you with tutorials and examples to use on your own.

New markets and changing formats have added exciting new energy into documentary production. Here are four pros with long experience making and commissioning investigative documentaries — ranging from the BBC and the Sundance Institute to Al Jazeera and independent studio Africa Uncensored. They will share tips and advice on how to make award-winning investigative films and – just as importantly – how to pitch to commissioning editors.

Once considered merely a form of fact-checking, forensic visual investigation has rapidly become a critical method of journalistic inquiry, thanks to new technologies, innovative skills, and the global ubiquity of social media imagery. In the chaos of dramatic public events, forensic visual reporting teams can now often answer the question: Who did exactly what, and when? And they’ve answered those questions for incidents from police violence in Hong Kong to a massacre in Sudan. In this panel session, attendees will hear about the latest techniques from three members of The New York Times’ pioneering Visual Forensics team.

We journalists can no longer ignore the threats to not only our sources but to our own physical safety. From Serbia to Russia and even in mature democracies, reporters and their sources face attacks by security forces, the targets of investigations, and proxy groups acting on behalf of autocrats. In this workshop, two investigative editors with extensive, global experience of these threats will share strategies to be safe, and to mitigate the risk of vulnerability, surveillance, and injury.

Take the next step after spreadsheets. Using SQL makes it possible to handle large amounts of data, safely share data with others, and combine tables together by joining. In this session and Joining Tables with Structured Query Language, you will understand how relational databases work, how to use SQL to ask your database questions, and how to summarize and filter data. Before the session: Download DB Browser SQLite from https://sqlitebrowser.org (for both PCs and Macs).

Journalists often work around the clock and in difficult circumstances — we witness some of the world’s worst behavior, and we’re under attack as never before. So how can we care for ourselves while doing our job? Experts from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma will offer tips and insights into how journalists can care for their own mental well-being while supporting their colleagues.

The need to protect our sources, our stories, and ourselves has never been greater. Yet studies show that many fail to take even basic protections. To make it easy on you, GIJN worked with experts at the Ford Foundation to develop a new Journalist Security Assessment Tool (JSAT) which we’re launching here at GIJC21. Give us one hour and we’ll show you how to improve your organization’s physical and digital security. Come hear two leading security experts who helped design the JSAT, Runa Sandvik and Matt Hansen, and get your security questions answered.