Category Archives: Tips and tricks

How to get scoops from local councils

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Since 2011, all councils have been required to publish expenditure on items over £500. At the CIJ Summer School this year, Paul Francis and Ted Jeory explained how to turn this information into a story… Continue reading

6 top tips on interviewing from Melanie McFadyean

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At the CIJ Summer School this year, Melanie McFadyean gave tricks and tips for successful interviewing. We’ve summarised the top six tips below…

1. Do extensive background research…

…so unnecessary questions are not asked. These waste time and not knowing the background looks unprofessional to the interviewee.

Knowing key information also helps to back up your question, especially when interviewing ‘difficult’ people like politicians. Continue reading

6 top tips for filming interviews from Robert Miller and Martin Tomkinson

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This year at the CIJ Summer School, Robert Miller and Martin Tomkinson offered advice for how to get the best visual and audio footage of your interviews. Their top tips have been summarised below…

1. Keep any shot still for ten seconds

Spraying the camera results in confusing pictures. To add to this, only use the zoom image in extreme circumstances as it will pixelate quickly. Continue reading

Live coverage of the Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer School

Help Me Investigate have sent Abbey Hartley to cover the Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer School, which starts today from 9am.

Speakers include former editor of Help Me Investigate Health, Alex Plough, the tax expert John Christensen; FOI specialists Paul Francis and Brendan Montague; and Andrew Jennings, the man behind investigations into the International Olympic Committee and FIFA

Watch out for her tweets @abbey_hartley and updates here on the Help Me Investigate blog.

AUDIO: Investigating a bank using environmental information laws: #Dataharvest13

One of the most interesting talks at the data and investigative journalism conference #Dataharvest13 was Gavin Sheridan‘s talk about how they tackled an Irish bank using laws on environmental information.

The bank in question was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, despite being Government-owned. But the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) applies differently, and Sheridan, along with Fred Logue, used those to request – then fight for – information on their involvement in property development.

Sheridan and Logue’s talk is split over three audio clips – embedded below:

Following FOI requests – making the most of WhatDoTheyKnow

Over on Help Me Investigate Health, Tom Warren has written a guide to using the Freedom of Information tool WhatDoTheyKnow. Key tips include:

  • Consider sending an FOI directly to the authority if you want to keep it private – but also remember that doing so publicly can be a great way to find contacts and ideas
  • You can use the site to find out an authority’s FOI email address
  • Use advanced search techniques in Google to search just that site

Read the post in full here.

Savile extracted

On Friday the BBC released documents from The Pollard Report into the Savile inquiry.

These were published as scanned PDFs, making it impossible to search text or count mentions of particular terms.

We’ve used document extraction service DocumentCloud to convert the two key documents – appendices 10 (statements) and 12 (emails and documents) – into text. These are linked below. If you use them, let us know so we can continue to do this.

Savile Transcript appendix 10 (PDF)
Savile Transcript appendix 10 (Text)

 

Savile Appendix12 (PDF)
Savile Appendix12 (Text)

 

BBC College of Journalism teams up with Help Me Investigate for health reporting event

We’ve teamed up with the BBC College of Journalism for an event on reporting the new health system that comes into force this year.

From April powers to control health spending, and to hold that to account, will be shifted. Over 200 new groups of GPs and other local representatives will have new responsibilities to commission health services, while local councils will also have new spending powers, as well as new responsibilities.

Journalists and the new health system‘ is bringing together the people who will be scrutinising the new clinical commissioning system – journalists, bloggers and councillors – with the new players making key decisions. 

It will discuss what are likely to be the important issues, as well as providing an opportunity for building new contacts with bodies, hyperlocal bloggers and health experts. 

The event is being held at Birmingham’s Margaret Street on March 26. Sign up and get more details at http://reportingccgs.eventbrite.com/