ICIJ: Global Collaboration for Maximum Impact

Identity

Collaboration rarely happens in the news industry, especially in investigative reporting where projects are carefully guarded under lock and key until an organization chooses to break the story. But new media outlets, and especially nonprofits, are exploring collaboration and recognizing the potential for increased reporting capacity, distribution reach, and impact. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is one such organization that has flipped the traditional model on its head and embraced radical collaboration.

ICIJ is a project within the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Public Integrity and was founded by journalist Chuck Lewis in 1997. Observing the rapid globalization of the 1990s, ICIJ’s original members believed that a journalism organization with an international mindset could be well suited to report stories that sprawled beyond any single country. At a time, according to ICIJ, when rapid globalization places “extraordinary pressures on human societies,”¹¹ it aims to be a globalized reporting network that counterbalances these pressures.

Mission and values

ICIJ’s mission is, perhaps not surprisingly, to “be the world’s best cross-border investigative team.” However, that comes second to its first aim: “to bring journalists from different countries together in teams—eliminating rivalry and promoting collaboration.”¹²

Interviews and participant observation with ICIJ staff clearly indicated that ICIJ’s collaborative nature, cross-border reporting, and, more importantly, its syndicated distribution models are tactics in the service of impact.

Operating processes

ICIJ has a networked organizational structure with two spheres. First, its directly employed journalists, located across countries, form the network node. Then, ICIJ’s network expands to include more than 190 investigative journalists in over sixty-five countries. They are generally employed by other newsrooms and publish under their employers’ mastheads.

According to ICIJ website, “ICIJ reporters and editors provide real-time resources and state-of-the-art tools and techniques to journalists around the world.”¹³ In-country reporters contribute to the collaborative investigations through on-the-ground reporting. Reporters pool resources as needed and freely share information. ICIJ Computer Aided Reporters provide data and data support to reporters who might not otherwise have the skills or programs necessary to conduct the analysis. Projects are then compiled and simultaneously published internationally in a syndicated manner, in multiple languages and publications across the globe.

Operational funding comes from philanthropic foundations and individual donations. Gerard Ryle, the leader of ICIJ’s headquarters staff in Washington, D.C., has primary responsibility for identifying and securing funding for general operations (although some comes through the Center for Public Integrity’s networks), which is not tied to specific editorial projects or topics. However, once an investigation is underway, ICIJ will often apply for smaller grants to fund additional reporting angles.

ICIJ’s structure, operating model, and editorial focus flows from its purpose. According to Ryle, the organization reports stories that are international, where it has evidence that institutions have broken down, and where it there are significant problems which should be—and can be—remedied.

ICIJ and impact

ICIJ has an underpinning model of change, namely that the wider the reach of high-quality, investigative stories and the stronger the distribution partners (in audience size and credibility), the greater the potential for change to remedy the problem (impact). Although ICIJ unambiguously aims for impact and practices journalism in pursuit of exposing problems so that they can be fixed, the organization does not start with a prescription for particular outcomes.

ICIJ’s model for change contrasts with many organizations that identify as social impact organizations. Social impact organizations with strong monitoring and evaluation processes generally work with what’s known as a theory of change, or a set of logical steps working back from the desired outcome. For example, if the desired outcome is fewer children dying in a specific region and common causes of death are known, a public health organization will ask what intervention can be taken to prevent those causes of death, and what resources and actions are needed to achieve that intervention.

To better understand how ICIJ’s collaborative process works and where “impact” fits into the big picture, we closely followed the reporting, production, distribution, and impact of one project, “Evicted and Abandoned: The World Bank’s Broken Promise to the Poor.”¹⁴ We were flies on the wall in editorial and production meetings, and conducted interviews with ICIJ staff and reporters from other organizations who participated in the project. This process is documented and explored in detail in Part Three of this paper.

ICIJ team shares responsibility for collecting impact indicators. Indeed, many functions within the organization are shared. Again, according to Ryle, that’s necessary for such a small team. The journalists continue to follow the story, which can include reporting on reactions by subjects or stakeholders. The online editor compiles traffic and social metrics, and also has primary responsibility for updating the blog with impact indicators. Impact is often then reported back to audiences as follow-up content.

However, because ICIJ projects are published in multiple languages in newspapers, on websites, and throughout social networks across the world, compiling comprehensive analytics is effectively impossible. And, while some news of real-world change makes its way back to ICIJ staff and can be documented, much change that occurs in local, regional, or even national settings is never known by the organization.

Thus, for ICIJ, the operating model is an impact catch-22: the large and diffuse network leads to powerful investigative stories with sweeping scope and a huge potential for change, but these same qualities make understanding reach, audience, and the full scale of real-world change difficult, if not impossible.

Story selection

ICIJ’s story selection adheres to journalistic news values that would be familiar to most investigative teams; however, to those news values ICIJ adds an extra filter regarding the potential impact of a project. Ryle says, “We’re looking for obvious issues of global concern, always look[ing] for a systemic failure in things,” and asking, “can we make a difference?”

He emphasizes that there is no direct relationship between funding and story selection. However, once a story is chosen, ICIJ will approach grant-making organizations it thinks would be interested in funding sub-projects, such as a reporting trip. For example, when reporters Sasha Chavkin and Mike Hudson realized that a part of the “Evicted and Abandoned” story would require reporting on World Bank activity in Asia, ICIJ applied for a grant to do on-the-ground reporting in the region.

ICIJ also considers the type of stories it has already reported when selecting future projects. Ryle says that ICIJ is aware that the organization has a reputation for doing high-quality investigations into tax-haven stories fueled by leaks. The organization thus seeks out different types of stories, such as “Evicted and Abandoned,” to avoid being perceived as a “one-trick pony.” In Ryle’s words: “You’ve got to satisfy your CEO. You’ve got to satisfy the board . . . Also, funders start mumbling . . . even though it’s a series of stories on the same topic, they see it as one story.”

This suggests a subtle influence of the funding model: The team looks for stories that fulfill ICIJ’s primary criteria, but that can also widen and strengthen the organization’s reputation as able to tackle a diverse range of stories.

Reporting and publishing strategy

ICIJ partners with other journalism organizations for both reporting and publication. ICIJ forms partnerships with organizations in countries relevant to the investigation both to increase on-the-ground reporting capacity and to ensure localized distribution of the investigation. In this way, ICIJ can maximize the amount of reporting that is possible with limited budgets and guarantee that the stories will reach the largest possible audience.

ICIJ does not partner with activist organizations. Ryle clarifies that ICIJ maintains a distance from activist organizations, and that, “[When] you even let them know that you’re about to publish something, that is bordering on advocacy by itself.” When there is an investigation that is relevant to advocacy organizations, ICIJ will often send the final, public version of the story to them in order to spur impact.

ICIJ’s global reporting and publishing strategies are closely intertwined. “We need to have a story that will make its way onto the front pages of every newspaper or TV station that we work with,” says Ryle. “It has to work equally well in France, as it does in Germany, as it does in Brazil, as it does in Japan.” And, while ICIJ acknowledges that it is difficult to find and report stories that are global in nature, Ryle asserts that, “by getting the right one you’re almost automatically guaranteed to get one part of the impact, which is that . . . news organizations publish the story prominently.”

Follow-up

After the launch of an investigation, ICIJ processes in place to track the project’s impact both for journalistic and management purposes. As described above, the strategy requires that journalists stay assigned to the investigation, continuing to report out stories that were identified during the initial investigation, as well as following new leads generated by the first rounds of publication. Reporters also report on the impacts of the investigations.

ICIJ furthermore gives one of its major funders, philanthropist Graeme Wood, a report every six months on how, operationally, his money has been spent and what it has produced. That explicitly includes instances of impact.