Rebuilding investigative journalism. Collaborative journalism: sharing information, sharing risk

Abstract

This article details the role of collaborative journalism during the process of rebuilding investigative journalism at its core thus assuring enduring investment in its quality. 
 We will start by characterizing the concepts of investigative journalism and collaborative journalism, using leading scholars in both of these complementary areas; we will, then, identify the pressures that constrains investigative journalism, and analyse how journalistic collaboration has a potential for resistance that can protect both investigative journalism and the journalists who practice it.
 Our article path will be complemented with the case study of the “Daphne Project”, the first project of the consortium “Forbidden Stories”, the international platform created by Laurent Richard. This project will be characterized through a documentary analysis and with interviews we conducted with both its founder, Laurent Richard, and Mathew Caruana Galizia, the son of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist murdered on October 16th 2017, during her investigations. 
 The Daphne Project was created for the purpose of keeping alive stories of journalists who have been killed, imprisoned or, for some reason, were unable to pursue their investigations. 
 Not only does collaborative journalism protect investigative journalism and investigative journalists, but cross-borders collaboration also allows “sharing the risk across a wide range of international players” (Sambrook, 2017).
 If the absolute exposure of the lonely investigative journalist turns him/her into a target in territories where freedom of speech is threatened, the murder of this Maltese journalist, followed by the murder of Slovakian Ján Kuciak, in 2018, placed Europe as an unlikely set on the risk map.
 While acknowledging the problems caused by international consortium of journalists, this research highlights, above all, how these partnerships, anchored in "radical sharing" (Guevara, 2016), are contributing to enhance investigative journalism.

Southern European Journalists’ Perceptions of Discursive Menaces in the Age of (Online) Delegitimization

“…After the murders of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 and the Slovakian journalist Ján Kuciak in 2018, the concern about the safety of European journalists grew (Coelho & Alves Rodrigues, 2020). This article has shown that Spanish, Italian, and Greek journalists do not perceive to be affected so much by violent threats as by a discursive form of threat, that has gained ground due to multiple factors.…”

Novas Fronteiras do Jornalismo de Investigação: Do Lobo Solitário à Alcateia

“…The technology that provides the means to filter and decrypt a volume of data with the gigantic dimension of the leak that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists dealt with in the Panama Papers 7 is the same that made it possible to build the network that brought together the 370 reporters scattered in different parts of the world, bridging different cultures, different languages and providing each reporter with the protective shield that, especially in regions of the globe affected by attacks on freedom of expression, made it possible to dilute the risk for all the journalists involved (Coelho & Rodrigues, 2020;Lück & Schultz, 2019;Sambrook, 2017).…”

“…Navigating the inherent challenge of defining the concept of quality, especially if applied to journalism (Marinho, 2015), several authors draw a direct correlation between quality and investigative journalism 1 (Antelava, 2018;Birnbauer, 2019;Coelho & Rodrigues, 2020;Starkman, 2014;Tong, 2022). Concurrently, other scholars emphasise that the decline in quality caused by the sustainability crisis has had a particularly significant impact on investigative journalism (Burgh, 2021;Cagé, 2016;Hamilton, 2016;Hoxha, 2019;Jack, 2006;Knobel, 2018).…”

“…The same principle was echoed in 2018 with the launch of the Daphne Project, the consortium's first project created by Laurent Richard, Forbidden Stories. The Daphne Project brought together 45 journalists from 15 countries and 18 media outlets who continued the investigative work of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist murdered in 2017 following her investigation into suspicions of alleged favouritism of the political power to a "mysterious" company, 17 Black, based in Dubai(Coelho & Rodrigues, 2020).10 Coda Story is a journalism start-up that connects multi-generational journalists, designers, technologists and editors. The platform aims to break out of the disposable news cycle by covering "crises in a way that creates a meaningful, cohesive narrative"(Antelava, 2018, p. 222).…”

El proyecto IJ4EU como fórmula estratégica de colaboración periodística cross-border ante la desintermediación y la desinformación

“…Iniciativas como las del International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), ProPublica y Journalism++ subrayan no sólo la creciente solidez de estas propuestas sino la diversidad de tipologías que admiten y la constante apuesta por nuevas narrativas de carácter multimedia y por novedosos procedimientos para presentar las ingentes cantidades de datos que son necesarias para generar contenidos periodísticos contrastados y fiables que aporten verdadero valor añadido (Parra, Edo y Marcos, 2017;Coelho y Rodrigues, 2020).…”