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Unholy Alliances and Empire of Ashes win Global Shining Light award at 2015 GIJC
Posted: Oct. 12, 2015 | Tags: journalism
The 2015 Global Shining Light winners were named Saturday at the 9th Global Investigative Journalism Conference in in Lillehammer, Norway. The co-winners, Unholy Alliances and Empire of Ashes, were selected out of 76 submissions from 34 countries.
Unholy Alliances exposed corruption surrounding Montenegro’s Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic and his ties with organized crime. It was produced by The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a not-for-profit, joint program of a number of regional nonprofit investigative centers and for profit independent media stretching from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.
Empire of Ashes investigated for five months how illegal trade in cigarettes was becoming more profitable than drugs in parts of South America. The project explained how the new trend was affecting organized crime in South America and how it is tied to Horacio Cartes, the president of Paraguay.
A certificate of excellence was awarded to YanukovychLeaks, a project by a team of journalists who salvaged 25,000 documents during the 2014 Ukrainian revelation. The documents demonstrate how the ousted Ukrainian president stole millions of dollars.
The conference, which ended Oct. 11, included panel discussions, presentations and networking events for the more than 900 journalists who attended. Many shared ideas and tips for investigative journalism such as how to fundraise your investigation, research techniques on Google, 100 best databases and much, much more. The Workshop’s Chuck Lewis presented an academic paper and moderated two panels, while David Donald taught a series of data journalism classes.
On the last day of the conference, Johannesburg was named as the host city for next year’s GIJC, which means that for the first time, it will take place in Africa. The South African proposal made by the Investigative Journalism Workshop based in the University of Witwatersrand, defeated rival bids from Amman, Jordan, and Vancouver, Canada.
