I. ICIJ

ICIJ’s stated mission is to “be the world’s best cross-border investigative team,” which it does by bringing “journalists from different countries together in teams—eliminating rivalry and promoting collaboration.”⁶³ While there are indications that collaboration is becoming an emerging norm in today’s new media landscape, ICIJ has been ahead of this curve. In this landscape of increasing collaboration, ICIJ stands out due to the sheer size and scope of its projects, many of which involved dozens of journalists and media organizations across the globe.

The network structure of ICIJ and its syndicated content model were developed with one goal in mind: impact. In interviews and through participant observation with ICIJ staff, we found clear indications that ICIJ’s collaborative nature, cross-border reporting, and, more importantly, its syndicated distribution models continue to be tactics in the service of impact. According to editor Mike Hudson: “Everything is predicated on writing powerful stories: accurate, hard-hitting, deep digging, powerful journalism. And then, readership. But these all dovetail. The primary discussion is about the content, but knowing [the rest] will lead to impact.”⁶⁴

Hudson recognizes that impact—real-world change—may take “many years to manifest.” For example, he says, “Action plans are announced but not implemented.” While change might be promised, action can be just “mere spasms of reform that don’t do anyone any good.” The real impact, he adds, “is that change that is sustained attention beyond PR and press releases.”

ICIJ’s networked organizational structure consists of two spheres. At its core, ICIJ directly employs journalists located across the globe (at the time of writing, staff includes six full-time and seven contract journalists), who report, coordinate the reporting efforts of others, and develop projects’ distribution strategies. ICIJ’s extended network includes more than 190 investigative journalists in at least sixty-five countries. These reporters are generally employed by other newsrooms and publish under their employers’ mastheads. ICIJ provides monetary and other resources such as data reporting to in-country reporters, as necessary.

ICIJ assumes that for high-quality investigative stories, the greater the reach of a story 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 they can be fixed, the organization does not acknowledge or promote any specific prescription or outcome.

On the surface, ICIJ’s model seems almost absurdly obvious: Partner with as many reporters and organizations across the globe to conduct in-depth investigations and distribute them globally to reach maximum audience. But the elegance of the model obscures the degree of complexity required in the scaffolding for these projects. The success of ICIJ projects relies on the successful maneuvering of ICIJ to manage partner relationships, expectations, information, and much more. ICIJ senior editor Michael Hudson acknowledges that the partnership model is inefficient if one considers only the number of stories published based on effort put into investigations. However, he says that this model is not necessarily set up for maximum output, but instead for impact: “A key part of impact is agenda-setting and dominating the conversation.”

ICIJ director Gerard Ryle notes that there are two main advantages to the organization’s partnership model, through which they bring partners in early in the reporting process: First, partners are able to contribute reporting resources, and local knowledge and expertise; and second, partners provide almost guaranteed publishing platforms across the globe. He says that with this model, in some cases, “A story can be published in thirty-five countries in a single day.”⁶⁵

As a nonprofit, the collaborative model has additional logic for ICIJ. “The basic business model [of journalism] is failing,” Ryle says. “Organizations aren’t spending the kind of money they used to spend on investigative journalism. By pooling resources, we’re able to cut out a lot of the cost.” By sharing photographs, graphics, and travel and document costs, ICIJ is able to manage large-scale projects much more quickly and at lower cost than a traditional newsroom.

Case study: “Evicted and Abandoned”

Spoiler alert: ICIJ’s collaborative “Evicted and Abandoned” investigation found that, over the last decade, projects funded by the World Bank have physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people; that the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation have financed governments and companies accused of human rights violations; and that, from 2009 to 2013, World Bank Group lenders invested fifty billion dollars into projects graded the highest risk for “irreversible or unprecedented” social or environmental impacts.⁶⁶ But how did they get this story? And how did an ICIJ investigation result in a powerful international institution, the World Bank, changing its own internal policy?

ICIJ is known for its big investigations with a leak at the center. However, in 2014, ICIJ wanted to diversify the types of stories it covered so as not to be pigeonholed as an outfit that “just” gets leaks. The brief came down for reporters to begin poking around and pitch ideas. Reporter Sasha Chavkin, sensing a possibility, started going to World Bank seminars in the spring of 2014, where he heard complaints about adverse effects of World Bank projects. Chavkin started to research and found that the complaints panel was hearing from complainants in Kenya, Honduras, and India, and that there were many impoverished people who were having their lives disrupted as a result of World Bank projects.

The World Bank’s state mission is to “end extreme poverty within a generation and boost shared prosperity.”⁶⁷ The bank has a promise of no harm, and for infrastructure or other physical projects, it is required to resettle or otherwise recompense affected people. However, Chavkin found indications that there is chronic undercounting of the actual harm done and individuals displaced as a result of World Bank projects, and that, often, the action plans that are designed to mitigate negative effects of bank projects are not implemented. Furthermore, there is no effective redress to any private processes or projects funded in whole or in part by the World Bank, and there are examples of violent evictions and people being displaced into lands controlled by tribes hostile to the new settlers. In one example, it became clear to Chavkin that a sum of the one to two billion-dollar fund made available to an Ethiopian health and education program were going toward forcible resettlement (theoretically to where there was more education infrastructure).

Chavkin says he wanted to understand the deeper roots of this story. Of the investigation, he notes, “I think it’s about both the scale of displacement and human rights abuses and violence associated with World Bank projects, and then the fact that pretty systemically the World Bank seems not to be following its rules for protecting the people who are in the path of its projects.” While local media covered individual cases of violence or wrongdoing resulting from these projects, Chavkin says it took reporting to determine that there was actually a larger systemic problem of forced resettlement that the World Bank seemed to accept fairly routinely as a part of its projects. Furthermore, he says, “There seemed to be very broad failure to take the required steps to protect the people who were being displaced.”⁶⁸

Chavkin and his editor, Mike Hudson, found sociologists and others who had been tasked with assessing the potential adverse impact of World Bank projects and who are meant to provide checks on approvals. However, they recognized that these experts do not hold any meaningful power and are often sidelined. Instead, “The World Bank approval side of the operation has all the power,” says Hudson, adding that the World Bank is “run and staffed by engineers and economists who have a very modeled, abstract way of understanding the world.”

When asked what ICIJ identified as a hypothetical “win” would be for the “Evicted and Abandoned” project, editor Mike Hudson says: “A win would be if ICIJ can penetrate the World Bank and write about what’s going on. [To] give voice to the marginalized, give a hearing to the people who are seen as peripheral.” He is clear that, as a news organization, ICIJ can not aim at for specific policy changes, but he asserts: “We want the world, the World Bank, policy makers, politicians, academics, “real people,” activists, voters, media to sit up and listen and read. This is important.”

For “Evicted and Abandoned,” Hudson estimates that ICIJ ultimately partnered with about fifteen other organizations.⁶⁹ From the outset, key partners in the United States included the Huffington Post, which was tasked with reporting and building a data interactive, the Global Post, NPR (through a freelancer), the GroundTruth Project, and the Investigative Fund. Internationally, early partners were The Guardian in the United Kingdom, El País in Spain, and three Swiss newspapers. Other partners included the German stations WDR and NDR. ICIJ recognized there was a reporting hole in Asia, so it applied for a grant to do reporting in the region. Ultimately, other partners included Nigeria’s Premium Times, BIRN in the Balkans, a Slovenian freelancer (Blaz Zgaga), radio freelancer Keane Barron (funded through the Fund for Investigative Journalism), freelancer Barry Yeoman (funded by The Nation Institute’s Investigative Reporting Fund), and Fusion.

ICIJ wrote, “In all, more than 50 journalists from 21 countries worked together to document the bank’s lapses and show their consequences for people around the globe.”⁷⁰ ICIJ also analyzed thousands of World Bank documents and made them accessible through an interactive database.⁷¹ The byline for the main story read: “By Sasha Chavkin, Ben Hallman, Michael Hudson, Cécile Schilis-Gallego and Shane Shifflett. With reporting from Musikilu Mojeed, Besar Likmeta, Ciro Barros, Giulia Afiune, Mar Cabra, Anthony Langat, Jacob Kushner, Jeanne Baron, Barry Yeoman, Blaž Zgaga and Friedrich Lindenberg.”

Differing journalistic norms, practices, and standards pose challenges in cross-country collaborations. Hudson says that ICIJ defaults to U.S. standards and style because they stand up elsewhere in the world. While he emphasizes that he doesn’t necessarily think that U.S. journalism is “better” than others, using this as the standard has worked so far.

ICIJ carefully selected reporting and publishing partners to maximize on-the-ground reporting capacity, reach, and potential impact of this investigation. According to Hudson, while “most of the consideration was about the fullness of the story,” there was a deep awareness of audience. “The composition of the partners was totally informed by balance, coverage, and ability of various partners to meet certain needs. For example, [ICIJ selected] Fusion for [its reach and expertise on] social media.”

Early in the reporting process, ICIJ selected the Huffington Post as a core partner with the intent of reaching a wide audience of “non-wonks.” The team immediately began thinking about the design: who would host the project, who would do the reporting, who would be responsible for editing, and who would do the data and design work. In the end, reporters said the reporting and writing was “pretty evenly split” between ICIJ and the HuffPo.

There were two separate data visualizations for this project, one hosted by the Huffington Post and the other by ICIJ. We asked HuffPo data reporter Shane Shifflett how the decision was made to have two visualizations. Shifflett says that HuffPo’s team decided that for its general audience, a map was the easiest way to present the complex information from the investigation. “HuffPo is eager to clue readers into what they can do, talk about solutions, and see how they can help. ICIJ is interested in impact and goals,” he says.⁷² So, ICIJ’s visualization was in-depth and made the deep data and records it had used during reporting accessible to its more technical and informed audience in order to provide the necessary information to pressure the World Bank directly.

On the HuffPo side, Shifflet says the team had to completely rethink the way in which it told this investigation for its audience. For example, he says he and his colleagues worked from the assumption that the HuffPo audience would know what the World Bank is, but that they wouldn’t be familiar with the intricacies of how international policy is made or the institutions in place to hold them accountable. Shifflet produced an interactive map and visualizations for the stories hosted on the HuffPo, with the central goal being to increase awareness of the World Bank. Shifflet also recounts that the HuffPo welcomed the opportunity to work with ICIJ’s investigative reporters, and to be able to champion such an important project.

ICIJ shared the full text stories with the Huffington Post and agreed to its posting the content on its website. According to ICIJ’s online editor Hamish Boland-Rudder, “The things I wanted in return for that was guarantee that we’d be able to have access to analytics to track the traffics website on that site, as well as have links back to our site and, more importantly, that these links be fairly prominently displayed. Also, we requested that there be an email sign-up.”

At launch, “Evicted and Abandoned” country-specific stories included Kenya,⁷³ Ethiopia,⁷⁴ Peru,⁷⁵ India,⁷⁶ Honduras,⁷⁷ and Kosovo.⁷⁸ The stories were written by a combination of ICIJ staff and partners, with local reporting partners in all cases. According to reporter Sasha Chavkin, ICIJ “chose our case studies based on the severity of impact to displaced communities, the quality of existing documentation, and the extent to which they illustrated larger themes [ICIJ] wanted to investigate (human rights abuses, financial intermediaries, etc.).” He says they also worked to have geographic diversity and to have stories that would be of interest to ICIJ’s partners on the project.