INN Members Speak at Global Conference

A strong contingent of INN members participated in the recent Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kiev, Ukraine, speaking on panels, marketing training opportunities, and meeting one on one and in groups with other participants.

Attendees at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in the Ukraine.

Attendees at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in the Ukraine.

The global conference, the seventh of its kind, drew more than 500 journalists from 80 countries despite extensive visa problems for journalists from Africa and Latin America. The conference spanned five days, with the first day devoted to a trip to Chernobyl, the site of one the world's worst nuclear plant disasters.

Among the INN members attending and speaking were Chuck Lewis of the Investigative Reporting Workshop; Mark Horvit of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting; Joe Bergantino of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting; Bill Buzenberg of the Center for Public Integrity and many of his staff; Chase Davis of the Center for Investigative Reporting; Jennifer LaFleur of ProPublica; Sheila Coronel of the Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting; and Brant Houston of the Investigative News Network.

Handouts and tip sheets from the conference will be posted the Global Investigative Journalism Network Web site, gijn.org, as they become available. In addition, the Nieman Reports did a special hard copy edition for the conference in its issue on covering global corruption last spring. It can be found online.

The first global conference was held in 2001 in Copenhagen after Houston and Danish journalist Nils Mulvad conceived of expanding a successful Scandinavian conference into a global conference. In 2003, at the second conference (also held in Copenhagen) the global network was formed of independent nonprofit centers, with several future INN member organizations as co-founders.

Since then, the global network has held conferences in Amsterdam, Toronto, Lillehammer in Norway, Geneva, and Kiev. The next conference is scheduled for Rio de Janiero in 2013.

If your organization is interested in becoming a part of the global network, please contact Brant Houston at brant.houston@gmail.com. The network is a loosely-knit organization of nonprofits and has no officers or membership fees. The network also runs a Facebook page and has a listserv global-l, hosted by Investigative Reporters and Editors.