Organise, structure, present: Effective ways of working with information for investigative journalists

Lessons learned on compiling and presenting information from our Investigative Journalism for Europe fund expert calls.

Cultivating sources, tracking and interviewing relevant people, accessing documents — investigative journalism is a tough job. While the process of information gathering is a challenge, investigative journalists can feel equally overwhelmed with the huge amounts of information they have collected. Yet, finding effective ways to organise and structure material and present it in the form of an impactful story is integral to the process.

So, how can journalists make the process more efficient? And how can they employ visual strategies to tell stories in a compelling way?

At the European Journalism Centre, we organised expert calls for the three cohorts of our grantees of the Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund. Based on the needs of our grantees (both staff journalists and freelancers) who were in different stages of their investigations, a large part of the training sessions was dedicated to discussions on efficient ways of compiling and presenting information. Our trainers for these expert calls were Mark Lee Hunter and Luuk Sengers, who have devised the story-based inquiry method on structuring and composing investigative narratives, and Eva Constantaras, data journalist and investigative trainer.

Here’s what we learned.

How can you keep your findings straight, accessible and structured?

Investigations generate masses of material. It is crucial to order it in a way that makes composing the final story simpler and more efficient. In any long-form story “organisation, composition and structure is primordial,” said Mark Lee Hunter and Luuk Sengers.

There are multiple ways to reach this goal. Here are some recommendations:

• Creating a master file is key. This master file will include the hypothesis of your investigation, a timeline of events, information and quotes from sources, questions that will further guide your investigation and a summary of your observations.
• Keep your database uniform. Basic steps such as entering dates in the same format or linking dates to the document will help while looking for specific information.
• Enter information chronologically — do not go back and forth in time. A sequence of events and people’s subsequent actions can be used to show cause and effect.
• Keep notes of your personal observations while reporting (time, date, day, place). These can be used to add details and more colour to your story.
• Scan documents and photos you have in paper form. Foxit is a good tool for working with digital documents.
• Make sure everyone adding to the master file follows the same format. Tresorit and CryptPad are useful tools for collaboration within and across teams while keeping your data safe.
• Keep the master file intact for your legal rights.

Screenshot from our trainer’s presentation at the expert call

Once your material is in place, the next big task is to make sure that the material is presented in an impactful way that enhances the findings of your investigation. Employing visual strategies can help, here’s how:

Using data visualisation for telling your story in a compelling way.

While consuming news, audiences are faced with information overload, misinformation and distorted facts and figures. Increasingly low attention spans coupled with audience skepticism regarding news also pose a challenge while presenting a story. One way to tackle this is to use data visualisation to tell stories. “Data visualisation offers an opportunity to humanise storytelling and engage wider newsroom talent and wider audiences in what may otherwise be very dense, specialised content,” said Eva Constantaras.

Here are her tips:

• Understand the purpose of your visualisation. Infographics should serve a bigger purpose than just making a story look pretty.
• Context is key. A good way of giving context is through annotations. The importance of data lies in its power of setting things in context!
• Storyboard your visuals (with graphs and text).
• Headlines should be authoritative and not descriptive.
• Follow a proven process and see what visualisations have worked well with audiences.
• Keep the infographic simple and do not tap into the decoration trap or your readers will lose the point your investigation is making.
• If you don’t keep it simple, explain how the chart works.
• Be transparent. Link to source and full dataset, use subheads and notes to explain uncertainties like margin of error, data gaps. Remember, data gaps are a story in itself.
• Upload the code to Github- a hosting platform where developers can store their computer codes. This will help all the programmers who are working on a similar project to collaborate with each other and also share their code easily as and when required.
• Include methodology used while collecting the data in your story.
• Don’t do it alone! Data is a team sport, and it is always good to have more eyes.

Screenshot from our trainer’s presentation at the expert call

At the end, when all is done and your piece is ready to be published, use these tips to have a successful launch:

• Present longer stories in parts.
• Alert your sources and different stakeholders involved in the story.
• Share the details of your sources with colleagues if you sense that once your story is public it might put you in danger.

To sum it up, the entire investigation process from start to finish requires a concrete strategy in terms of planning, organising, structuring, and lastly presenting the final piece. These tips can help journalists not to get lost in the huge amounts of information they uncover and ensure that their stories create the desired impact with audiences.

Don’t miss our grantees’ investigative projects to see how they’ve used these tips in practice!