Australian journalists can apply now to spend 10 months with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2014, honing your cross-border investigative reporting skills.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is launching a new Investigative Journalism Fellowship in collaboration with The Global Mail, a nonprofit journalism outfit based in Australia.
This is a unique opportunity for an Australian investigative journalist to work with ICIJ in Washington DC for 10 months from January 2014, with a further two months spent with The Global Mail in Sydney.
The fellowship will give a reporter the opportunity to work on her or his own cross-border reporting project, using all the resources of the ICIJ network and of our soon-to-be-created DC-based research desk. The aim is to produce a significant piece of investigative reporting that can be used potentially by dozens of media partners around the world, all at the same time.
In time, we would like to expand the fellowship program by finding sponsors for reporters from other countries.The fellowship will teach the reporter how to gather information internationally at a time when more and more stories are global. They will learn how to find, interrogate, and manage large datasets and the rigorous art of U.S.-style fact-checking, and leave with a new appreciation of the advantages of cross-border collaborative journalism. Most importantly, they will become part of a growing investigative journalism community that can offer on-going help and mentoring.
The new fellowship opportunity comes about thanks to the generosity of the Australian philanthropist and businessman Graeme Wood.
His three-year backing of ICIJ will allow us to build on our existing support from the Adessium Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation and from the global public at large. Each of our supporters recognizes a need to preserve and protect investigative reporting globally during a period of turmoil.
Though the ICIJ staff is based in Washington, DC, we are very much a global organization. You could say that ICIJ is a series of virtual newsrooms spread around the world.
Our newsrooms are the newsrooms of our regular media partners such as the Guardian, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. And of independent investigative centers such as IDL-Reporteros in Peru, CIPER in Chile and Investigative Reporting Project Italy.
There are no borders – real or imagined – when working for ICIJ. There are no intellectual borders and no language borders that will stop us from pursuing a topic. The main stipulation for an ICIJ project is that it must have global significance. And the journalism we do, we give away for free.
This, of course, brings extra pressures to every project but the rewards for each investigation are also greater.
At the center of ICIJ are our 160 ICIJ members spread over more than 60 countries. They are among the best investigative reporters in the world and each has much to teach about this strange craft we all practice.
Thanks to the input of our members, ICIJ has grown into the world’s leader in cross-border, collaborative journalism during a time when investigative reporting has been decimated in newsrooms everywhere.
Our recent “Offshore Leaks” investigation has been credited by The New York Times and other media with forcing Western nations to step up efforts to end tax havens and prompting official investigations in multiple countries. The European Union’s top tax official has said ICIJ’s stories have transformed tax politics in Europe.
The project has been hailed as the largest international journalism collaboration in history. It has involved more than 100 journalists in more than 50 countries – and continues to grow.
Australian reporters can apply for the fellowship here, before September 9, 2013.
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