Columbia UDP Investigative Journalism Workshop (Latin America)

The Columbia University School of Journalism, the Diego Portales University School of Journalism, the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), and the Global Center – Santiago de Columbia convene a workshop on advanced journalistic investigative techniques using open source intelligence.

The workshop will be in Santiago de Chile between March 18 and 23, 2024.

What does open Source Intelligence mean?

• Open Source Intelligence is a research methodology that uses publicly available content and information usually accessible through the Internet.
• This methodology involves specifying the focus of the research and mastering search techniques through various free access pages and applications, to then give coherence to the findings, fitting the pieces together like a puzzle.
• This workshop will seek to teach both these search techniques and train in the reasoning that allows these searches to be transformed into publishable findings and research.
• For a week you will show and work with real research to learn how to use globally available resources and how to organize, use and visualize data to shape the story.

The course will cover

• Journalistic investigation methodology: how to define the question, search the files, define source and data strategy, how to carry out the investigation with ethics, clues and security.
• Introduction to open data: where to find it, how to distinguish what data is useful, how to extract data from a website using a computer program, how to clean it and how to structure databases based on one’s own data.
• What are the most important tools to carry out searches for individuals, institutions and companies, including multinationals, international trade and zombie companies or in tax havens.
• Investigations using social networks and other digital footprints.
• Legal, physical and comprehensive security for high-risk investigations and how to handle them.
• The philosophy of cross-border research and how it is being done in the region.
• Participants must submit a research proposal to develop during the course with the potential to be published at the end of the workshop. Topics may focus on human rights, environmental protection, corruption or organized crime.
• A maximum of 14 participants will be accepted.

Requirements

• Journalists from Latin American countries are invited to participate in this innovative program.
• Excellent oral and written command of the Spanish language.
• Be a practicing journalist and provide samples of your work (on any platform: digital, written, sound or audiovisual). The course requires participants to have sufficient experience in the practice of journalism, including, but not limited to, investigative journalism. Participants are recommended to have an advanced level of training in the use of Excel and/or database editing programs.
• There are two places reserved for graduates of the Diego Portales University, who must have demonstrable experience in investigative journalism. It is desirable that they have received awards or recognition for their work in the area.
• With the application, interested parties are required to present a proposal for the research they wish to develop during the course and which they can publish after the program has ended. The proposal can be research in its initial or advanced state and must be viable, well thought out and realistic.
• If the applicant is a freelance journalist, the letter of support must be from the editor in charge of a media outlet in which the applicant has recently published or intends to publish the proposed investigation.

Learn more here and apply.