ICFJ Knight Roundup: The Human Cost of African Mining, Tracking Argentine Elections

By: Jefferson Mok | 07/16/2015

Chequeado tracks candidates and election results this weekend in Buenos Aires

Chequeado, a fact-checking platform in Argentina and a grant recipient from Knight Fellow Mariano Blejman’s media incubator HacksLabs, is teaming up with Cargografías (link in Spanish) to vet five candidates in this weekend’s mayoral elections in Buenos Aires. Cargografías uses public data combined with crowdsourced reports to chart the career trajectory of political candidates, and together the two are publishing visual reports about each candidate’s positions and their campaign timelines.

Exposing the hidden deaths and injustices behind Australian mining in Africa

Fatal Extraction, a multimedia report published today by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), with support from Knight Fellow Justin Arenstein’s African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) and recent ICFJ Knight Fellow Friedrich Lindenberg, exposes Australian-listed mining companies' stakes in the African mining industry and their links to hundreds of alleged deaths and injustices. ICIJ worked with over 13 reporters from 13 African countries on this groundbreaking piece, making it one of the largest collaborations of African journalists. View the story here.

Chicas Poderosas aims to support a new generation of women leaders in digital newsrooms

Last month, former Knight Fellow Mariana Santos, founder of Chicas Poderosas, organized a conference at Stanford University, getting together 35 journalists and developers from Latin America to discuss how to increase women’s roles in digital newsrooms. ICFJ’s Deputy Vice President of Programs Elisa Tinsley attended the conference and wrote about the conference’s goal to support women in leading the technology shift.

Kenya issues ban on drones for civilian use

Dickens Olewe, a winner of the African News Innovation Challenge organized by Arenstein, writes about the new ban imposed by the Kenyan government to restrict the use of drones by civilians and its implication for journalists. Olewe has used drones in his reporting and knows how they can lend new angles to news investigations.

Clem Richardson reflects on the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina

Former Knight Fellow Clem Richardson has strong ties to the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Church, where a shooting claimed nine lives last month. Richardson visited the church and shared his thoughts in the New York Daily News, where he was a columnist.

Recommended reading by ICFJ Knight Fellows

This post is also published on IJNet, which is produced by ICFJ.

Main image CC-licensed by Flickr via CIFOR.

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