Introduction to the Book

In pursuit of its continued focus on holding power to account—locally, nationally and globally—investigative journalismFootnote 1 as a practice has actively incorporated various digital skills and capabilities. The embrace of digital journalism has led to collages of skillsets that have come together in new ways to complement one another or merge into something unprecedented. These processes of hybridisation are regularly discussed in relation to how journalism is undergoing riveting change; as a concept, hybridity challenges traditional notions of how journalism is being produced and by whom. Domingo (2016, p. 145), for example, points out that hybridisation is taking place within journalistic practices both overtly and covertly amongst a range of (new and traditional) actors, platforms and organisations. The hybrid combination of digital and traditional physical forms of journalistic collaboration has also given rise to new horizontal processes (Russel, 2016, p. 149).

While much has been written about various types of investigative journalism, few researchers have looked at how the practice of investigative journalism adapts to hybrid organisations, hybrid technology and hybrid professional cultures. Chadwick (2013) is recognised as the scholar who has most increased our awareness of how traditional ways of creating media are blending and fusing with new ways. Chadwick uses an historical approach to conclude that ‘older and newer media logics in the field of media and politics blend, overlap, intermesh, and coevolve’ (2013, p. 4). In this book we are specifically interested in how such blending, overlap**, intermeshing and coevolving take place in new forms of investigative journalism in relation to new units, organisations, actors and technologies. Hamilton emphasises the impact of hybridisation upon journalistic practices, products and forms (Hamilton, 2016, p. 164) while cautioning against adversarial conceptualisations of journalistic practices such as ‘mainstream’ versus ‘alternative’ (Domingo, 2016, p. 145). Here, we draw upon the concept of hybridity in several ways. Investigative journalism is, after all, a very expensive form of journalistic practice (Hamilton, 2016) whose production already typically involves professional journalists, non-journalists, editorial developers and activists; it boasts a unique ability to be hybrid in this sense. It also engages with crises, which compel further novel combinations of skillsets and actors.

Recent studies have already acknowledged variations on the theme of hybridisation, engaging with collaborative journalism (Carson, 2020; Carson & Farhall, 2018), open-source investigations (Müller & Wiik, 2021) and cross-border collaborative journalism (Alfter, 2019; Konow-Lund et al., 2019). All of these types of investigative journalism revolve around the individual or institutional initiative to hold power to account by exposing and documenting questionable activity (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2021, p. 205; Negrine, 1996)Footnote 2—think, for example, of the reporter-driven American investigation of Watergate in 1970s, the interactive data maps created by Adrian Holovaty (see Anderson, 2018),Footnote 3 or data-driven transnational investigative projects such as the Panama Papers (Konieczna, 2018). New forms of investigative journalism often arise in bottom-up organisations for investigative journalism or local, national or international journalist networks, and they tend to be hybrid in the sense that they integrate new insights or opportunities into established, traditional forms of practice.

Whether these investigations are conducted via street-level reporting or expanded into cross-border collaborations unpacking big data on a global scale, they all demand insight, initiative and adaptability from both reporters and editors. While investigative journalism has often been thought of as the practice of lone wolves, particularly in the Western part of the world (De Burgh & Lashmar, 2021, p. 3), such a working style seems less efficient and less productive in the wake of the kinds of financial, climatological and pandemic-related crises which now accompany daily life around the world. Increasingly, therefore, books on investigative journalism begin by emphasising the importance of systematic collaboration in the field, locally, nationally and internationally (Alfter, 2019; Candea, 2020; Carson, 2020; Melgar, 2019; Sambrook, 2018). Collaboration is important because it accommodates the ‘many-to-many’ connections recognised as necessary by Castells (1996). Berglez and Gearing (2018, p. 4574) point out that ‘collaboration has long been recognized as a technique for achieving synergistic results in the fields of scientific and medical research’ and go on to state that ‘collaboration between reporters and media outlets is beginning to emerge as an important tool for carrying out routine journalism in the networked media environment’.

Here, we will exchange the abiding scholarly tendency to categorise new journalistic practices (as ‘cross-border’ or ‘cross-disciplinary’, for example) for an operative notion of ‘hybridity’ which we feel better captures the conditions in the field at the moment. Chadwick (2017, p. 18) defines hybridisation as ‘a process of simultaneous integration and fragmentation. Competing and contradictory elements may constitute a meaningful whole, but their meaning is never reducible to, nor ever fully resolved by, the whole’. Through hybridisation, each element contributes to the creation of something new, even as its individual nature remains intact. Chadwick adds that traditional forms of investigative practice are increasingly comfortable existing side-by-side with new ways of organising this work using technology and incorporating different actors, including bloggers, technologists and ordinary citizens. Hybridity best characterises today’s complex investigations across borders, for example, which involve both freelance and institutional reporters in projects driven from the bottom up as well as the top down. In such cases, reporters and managers within professional regional or global networks can have an impact equal to that of the top editors at legacy media organisations.

Hybridity in investigative journalism seems to thrive most during crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, put investigative journalism to the test yet again, clearly demonstrating the need for increased journalistic interconnectedness and interdependence—that is, hybridity—during crisis coverage. The pandemic’s global impact demanded that journalists collaborate across borders and entire continents in order to develop the most knowledgeable sources and secure the best possible information. The latest edition of the foundational book on investigative journalism by Hugo de Burgh and Paul Lashmar (2021) indeed begins by discussing the profound (crisis-driven) globalisation of journalism, though other studies have also remarked upon the inverse—that crises can also generate increased nationalism and less transnational interdependence among journalists.

While there are many different crises which might trigger an investigative journalistic response from legacy organisations, professional assemblages of individuals working together (Reese, 2021, p. 110), networks or individuals, we will focus on three types in this book: (1) organisational crises in the practice of journalism itself, (2) sudden societal crises referred to as critical events, such as terror attacks (Tandoc et al., 2021), and (3) the comparatively new types of crisis distinguished as ‘global’ in nature, such as the pandemic (Cottle, 2022). Before we go on to characterise the various journalistic responses to these respective crisis types, we will elaborate upon our understanding of investigative journalism in general.

Investigative Journalism, Transformation and Innovation During Crises

The interplay among emerging forms of journalistic practice, structural factors such as how work and practices are organised, technological innovations and changing professional roles has long attracted academic attention. Still, such studies of innovation in journalism have generally addressed normal or typical news production situations rather than what happens during breaking news moments, crises or catastrophes—times when, it must be said, academics are often unable to negotiate access to the newsroom but the work there changes profoundly (Solvoll & Olsen, 2024). When researchers discuss innovation, they tend to dwell upon its ‘newness’, Steensen notes: ‘Innovation research tends to emphasize newness. Whether it is a new idea, a new technology, a new commodity or a new combination of existing ideas, technologies or commodities, it is the newness and its consequences that are under scrutiny’ (Steensen, 2013, pp. 45ff). In addition, Western scholars tend to emphasise journalistic “rebuilding”, “reconsidering”, “remaking”, “reconstructing”, “rethinking” and “reinventing” (Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch, 2020a, p. 14), but these words are much less descriptive of burgeoning global practices, which demand a more all-encompassing perspective, especially regarding the impact of crises (Zelizer, 2015).

Investigative journalism itself affords a unique opportunity to study journalistic responses to crises at the micro, meso and macro levels (Reese, 2021). Whereas normal journalism remains generally reactive (Schlesinger, 1978) in that reporters tend to wait for something newsworthy to happen, investigative journalism seeks to initiate stories which will hopefully produce social change (Bebawi, 2016). This inherent proactivity brings with it an openness to change and new possibilities—one which proves very useful during crises. The work that investigative reporters do can also coincide in unanticipated ways with the needs of the public when times are especially turbulent or confusing (Creech & Nadler, 2018). When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in December 2019, it quickly turned into a global health crisis which was unprecedented in modern times, and which led to a greatly increased demand for information at the local, national and international levels simultaneously.

Responding to this need for guidance and perspective quickly supplanted any abiding allegiance to either profit or tradition. In fact, the credibility of journalism itself came to rely upon how investigative journalists would adjust and succeed in their trade. So, while some studies of innovation in journalism have associated it with business needs or the furtherance of existing institutional values (see, for example, Pavlik, 2013, p. 183; Solvoll & Olsen, 2024; Storsul & Krumsvik, 2013), we have found that public service–oriented innovation also takes place from the bottom up, as mentioned earlier (Konow-Lund et al., 2022). For example, as we will see in a later chapter, Rachel Oldroyd, former managing editor and CEO of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, created a local news unit called the ‘Bureau Local’ to extend the purview of her existing organisation. The unit built up a network of professional journalists, students, digital developers and members of the public which has since organised local digital collaboration projects in a cross-disciplinary manner. These projects are not for commercial gain but instead pursued in the public interest, specifically in terms of the rejuvenation of local news in Britain. The Bureau Local’s nonprofit model of collaboration for the public good was also inspired by the global journalistic work on the Panama Papers project. We agree with other academics that Schumpeter’s notion of ‘creative destruction’ is useful to these kinds of inquiries (Schlesinger & Doyle, 2015) because it emphasises the fact that innovation in journalism is less a self-contained means to an end than an ongoing process—a ‘series of dynamics, mechanisms, means, and changes that lead to a particular outcome’ (Siles & Boczkowski, 2012, p. 306). In short, innovation propels a transformation toward a ‘less bounded’ and more ‘fluid’ journalistic practice (Anderson, 2016; Kantola, 2016; Ryfe, 2016; Vos, 2016) with huge implications for the profession and especially the ways in which it is organised.

Ultimately, investigative journalism is taking a hybrid turn in every sense. Open-source investigative platforms such as Bellingcat, Airwars, Forensic Architecture, the Syrian Archive (Müller & Wiik, 2021) and others accommodate a high incidence of cross-disciplinary collaboration among actors with very different backgrounds in journalism at, for example, the Global Investigative Journalist Network. Within investigative journalism, in particular, hybridity and fluidity characterise the ways in which global networks thrive (Berglez & Gearing, 2018) through both virtual and physical interactions (see Alfter, 2019, for an extensive consideration of cross-border journalistic collaboration). Paulussen (2016) associates newsroom innovation with digitisation and virtual activity in particular.

In this book, we focus on the many ways in which investigative journalists and news workers adapt their practices to challenging or unfamiliar circumstances, studying such initiatives at the organisational level, the individual level and the micro level (that is, ‘zooming in’ on the work; see Hartley, 2011). Referring to Chadwick’s (2013) hybrid media system, Reese (2021) derives a useful model of the hybrid institution in turn. Chadwick looks at how traditional ways of operating come to incorporate ‘newer’ logics (see Reese, 2021, p. 17) through processes characterised by ‘integration and fragmentation’, so, for example, a traditional broadcast might also be tweeted or blogged about. Reese, on the other hand, sees hybridity as an end in itself rather than a by-product of these historical dynamics (Reese, 2021, pp. 108ff). As outlined in the previous section, this book focuses on three types of crises that trigger an investigative journalistic response: (1) organisational crises in the practice of journalism itself, such as the struggles of the institutional press (Reese, 2021); (2) sudden crises (or ‘critical events’), such as the founding of the Forbidden Stories following the Charlie Hedbo attack; (3) and the comparatively new ‘global’ crises, such as the pandemic and its spurring of journalistic innovation around the world.

Hybridity resides in the journalism sector’s practices, which are the focus of our empirical studies. While arguing that ‘new practices have always been hybrid’, Hamilton (2016, p. 164) encourages researchers to pay more attention to three nexuses of hybridisation: (1) ‘social formation and use’, (2) ‘technology and form’ and (3) ‘news and marketing’. Hamilton’s example involving these nexuses is the Guardian’s investigation of NSA eavesdrop**, which directly challenged the authorities within otherwise democratic and liberal societies and hence lived up to the organisation’s ideal. Like Hamilton (2016) and Reese (2021), we suggest that these notions are particularly fruitful at a time of fieldwide transition wherein the traditional both coexists alongside the new (Steensen, 2013) and merges with it into something different. This ongoing negotiation within investigative journalism touches upon culture-specific professional traditions, such as when local UK journalists experiment with US data journalism; the adaptation of traditional tools to new types of digital technology, such as when data leaks become powerful news stories; and the extension of collaborative projects beyond journalists themselves to individuals with very different experiences, including bloggers as well as experts in artificial intelligence. Unlike general journalists, who are often assigned projects by editors and therefore have less individual autonomy, investigative journalists typically enjoy the freedom to decide what stories to pursue. Still, relatively few academic studies have looked in depth at what it takes to practice investigative journalism in the world today, as we will see below.

Investigative Journalism and What It Is—Again!

Most studies of investigative journalism begin with a definition of the field or practice (Alfter, 2019; Carson, 2020; Grøndahl Larsen, 2017; Protess et al., 1991; Stetka & Örnebring, 2013; Van Eijk, 2005) but usually also caution us that ‘investigative journalism comes in so many shapes and sizes that it is not easy to generalise’ (de Burgh, 2008, pp. 14–15). Despite its elusive nature, this practice is exalted both in the newsroom and in society and can be both professionally and culturally rewarding. Of course, not everyone believes that investigative journalism is fundamentally different from regular reporting. In an interview with the author Hugo de Burgh, Alan Rusbridger, then editor-in-chief of the Guardian, tried to articulate the difference between them as he saw it: ‘All journalism is investigative to a greater or lesser extent, but investigative journalism – though it is a bit of a tautology – is that because it requires more, it’s where the investigative element is more pronounced’ (quoted in de Burgh, 2008, p. 17). The Investigative Reporters and Editors organisation understands the practice to be ‘the reporting, through one’s own initiative and work product, of matters of importance to readers, viewers and listeners. In many cases, the subjects of the reporting wish the matters under scrutiny to remain undisclosed’ (Houston, 2009). This phrasing resonates with another description of investigative journalism as a ‘social practice’ which is ‘sustained [by] the efforts of practitioners to meet and extend the practice’s standards of excellence’ (Aucoin, 2005, p 5). Certainly, its practitioners like to compare notes and discuss how best to conduct it, as our cases will demonstrate (see also Alfter, 2019; Carson, 2020; de Burgh, 2008; de Burgh & Lashmar, 2021; Leigh, 2019). Scholars likewise favour studying the best and brightest in the business, based on awards and investigative renown, to glean insights into their working methods (Alfter, 2019; Carson, 2020; Ettema & Glasser, 1998; Gearing, 2016; Leigh, 2019). On the other hand, studies of the everyday practice of investigative journalism remain relatively rare—a gap this book tries to fill, particularly regarding journalism as, in the end, work (see also Örnebring, 2016).

Equally rare are studies involving access to investigative projects and workplaces in an ethnographic mode, save for those researchers who have applied various autoethnographic techniques to reflections upon their own experiences in the field (Alfter, 2019; Candea, 2020; de Burgh, 2008; de Burgh & Lashmar, 2021; Krøvel & Thowsen, 2018; Sambrook, 2018). Some former journalists have written dissertations interrogating their own first-hand experiences as well (Candea, 2020; Melgar, 2019). These autoethnographic efforts offer a unique inside perspective upon the practice of investigative journalism but do not substitute for more empirical methodological approaches. In addition, many former journalists grapple with loyalties to their colleagues and organisations that might prevent them from being entirely neutral in their scholarly approach. One of the very few non-autoethnographic studies of investigative journalism in the newsroom is Park’s doctoral thesis (2022); her research likewise informs parts of this book. Here, we appreciate the value of production studies and saw the ethnographic method as the optimal approach to our topic and themes. While it is seldom offered to researchers, we were able to negotiate access to our various target newsrooms, and part 2 of this book is primarily the result of our direct participant observation and in-depth interviews while there.

Investigative Journalism: Reporter-Driven or Source-Driven?

Most books on investigative journalism include a section on where and how the practice originated and survey those moments when it expanded in some way. They also offer ruminations on whether and how it has changed in recent times:

Journalism is getting better, but in many ways, it hasn’t changed […] Many of the people who are making decisions on what deserves scarce reporting resources are white men and they are not as likely, I don’t think, to immediately identify some of the issues that are most challenging to [undeserved communities], for example, black women. (Wendy Thomas, creator of non-profit news site MLK50, quoted in Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2021, p. 214)

Most histories of investigative journalism do focus on Western, generally male reporters and presuppose that the practice is a Global North phenomenon; only recently have female academic authors taken an interest in investigative journalism (Bebawi, 2016; Carson, 2020; Konow-Lund, 2019; Melgar, 2019; Park, 2022; Wang, 2016). Nonetheless, there are studies of investigative reporting practices in the Global South. For example, Haiyan Wang (2016) addresses the emergence of investigative journalism in China in relation to social change. She argues that, as part of Chinese journalists’ promise to be socially responsible, they ‘need to mix journalism with activism’ (Wang, 2016, p. 10), something that is frowned upon by many journalists in the Western world. Yet, at a time when opposition to activist journalism is growing in Western countries, other parts of the world are decidedly moving towards it. Wang acknowledges that investigative journalism in China, as elsewhere, was largely modelled on Western practices (2016, p. 2). Yet, this approach was not sustainable in the long run due to the friction between the government-run economy in China and the ‘enterprise nature of journalistic professionalism’ (2016, p. 9).

Saba Bebawi (2016) discusses the practice of investigative journalism in Arab cultural contexts as a hybrid phenomenon blending Western forms of investigative reporting with ingrained local practices. Despite extensive training in Western models of reporting as an ideal of practice, these reporters find it necessary to shape what they learn to the conditions on the ground. The results of this invention and adaptation, in both Arab contexts and elsewhere, merit further research.

Working in the Global South, Silvio Waisbord (2000) uses his extensive study of watchdog journalism in Latin America to criticise, among other things, the way in which US research on investigative journalism tends to focus exclusively on the methods ‘that reporters use to get information’ rather than its overall watchdog character in relation to autocratic political systems, for example (Waisbord, 2000, p. xv). According to Waisbord, South American journalists are less interested in this distinction:

South American journalists reject the understanding of investigative reporting in terms of specific methodological requirements that set it apart from other forms of journalism. They are sceptical about making newsgathering methods one of the salient characteristics of investigative journalism. Investigation is what journalism is anyway, they observe, so why make it a unique attribute of some journalists and reports? (Waisbord, 2000, p. xvi)

Ultimately, Waisbord wonders why definitions of investigative journalism often exclude source-driven investigations—an observation which evokes the WikiLeaks discourse. Ever since WikiLeaks published a video showing a US helicopter attacking journalists on the ground in Iraq—what was known as ‘Collateral Murder’ (Owen, 2016, pp. 27–28)—journalists and researchers, as well as the authorities, have debated whether WikiLeaks is an activist group or a real source of viable information. In 2010, after all, WikiLeaks began to insist, to the frustration of certain media organisations (Leigh & Harding, 2011), that it was a ‘legitimate journalistic enterprise’ (Owen, 2016, p. 27). The question of its actual motivations felt even more urgent during its famous collaboration with the New York Times, Der Spiegel and the Guardian on the ‘War Logs’ files in 2011, when there was much discussion regarding how to define these organisations’ cross-disciplinary engagement with Julian Assange. Should he be considered a collaborator or a source? Keller, then editor of the New York Times, clearly considered Assange the latter:

As for our relationship with WikiLeaks, Julian Assange has been heard to boast that he was a kind of puppet master, who recruited several news organizations, forced them to work in concert, and choreographed their work. This is characteristic braggadocio – or, as my Guardian colleagues would say, bollocks. Throughout this experience we have treated Julian Assange, and his merry band, as a source. I will not say ‘a source, pure and simple,’ because as any reporter or editor can attest, sources are rarely pure and simple, and Assange was no exception. But the relationship with sources is straightforward: You don’t necessarily endorse their agenda, echo their rhetoric, take anything they say at face value, applaud their methods or, most important, allow them to shape or censor your journalism. Your obligation, as an independent news organization, is to verify the material, to supply context, to exercise responsible judgment about what to publish and what not, and to make sense of it. That is what we did. (Keller, 2011, p. 20)

Ultimately, Keller concluded that Assange was not exactly a partner and WikiLeaks was not journalism as such. Still, WikiLeaks did serve as a collaborator in a form of journalistic hybridity that proved amenable to the mainstream media (Chadwick, 2017). This book will explore such alternative hybrid production strategies in terms of the organisation sponsoring them and the individuals carrying them out through their practice, use of technology and adaptation of roles. And it will do so while investing in the particular character and context of investigative journalism, which is, in fact, qualitatively different from other kinds of journalism (Carson, 2020).

Revisiting the Cyclical History of Investigative Journalism and Its Relation to Crisis

The history of investigative journalism usually begins with an account of various national efforts to hold power to account (Carson, 2020; de Burgh, 2008; Leigh, 2019) which is usually centred upon the United States and the Global North. Such discussions engage with the practice’s effects rather than, in Feldstein’s words, the ‘historical causes of investigative reporting’ (Feldstein, 2006, p. 3). Feldstein laments the dearth of efforts to systematically analyse how investigative journalism has evolved over time in the interests of predicting its future. In an interesting account of how a method-focused practice in investigative journalism has spread, Baggi (2011) looks at investigative journalism in Europe early in the new millennium (see also Van Eijk, 2005). While all of this work concentrates on Global North investigative journalism, this book looks elsewhere in the world as well to understand the origins, traditions and innovations that inform the field today.

There are three historical phases of investigative journalism from its emergence in the United States to its ascendance around the world:

  1. 1.

    The muckraker phase

  2. 2.

    The re-emergence of investigative journalism in the 1960s and 1970s

  3. 3.

    The rise of global investigative journalism

Each of these phases was triggered by specific crises. The term ‘muckrake’ was coined by US President Theodore Roosevelt (Feldstein, 2006, p. 5) to describe the work done by journalists confronting systemic problems such as political or economic corruption, incidents of malpractice, and social issues and inequality in the muckraker phase which lasted about from 1902 until WWI emerged (Ibid. p. 6) In the ‘new muckraking age’ of the 1960s and 1970s (2006, p. 7), investigative journalism re-emerged to produce stories about the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the Arizona Project,Footnote 4 the last of which was triggered by the murder of a journalist in the United States. Regarding this new era, Feldstein (2006, p. 9) observes that both the ‘supply’ of investigative news from media organisations and the public’s ‘demand’ for such ‘accountability journalism’ increased. The recent rise of global investigative journalism started within the various crises suffered by the institutional press, one of which Reese (2021) describes as the decline in public trust in certain longstanding media organisations. In this book, we will concentrate upon this last phase (see also Konow-Lund et al., 2019) and the changes it has brought about.

Investigative Journalism, Western Bias and Research Questions

In recent overviews of journalism studies, academics consistently point to the Western bias of the research (Paulussen, 2016; Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch, 2020a, b; Waisbord, 2000; Zelizer, 2013). Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch (2020a, b, p. 14) observe:

Most of the studies typically considered groundbreaking or field-defining have been authored by scholars from the West. The paucity of recognition of non-Western scholarship is also reflected in the way journalism scholars distribute scholarly prestige. Between 2011 and 2018, the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association has given all of its 20 book, dissertation, and outstanding article awards to scholars from universities located in the West, with 11 of these going to researchers based or trained in the US.

This state of affairs, of course, recalls Chalaby’s (1996) insistence that journalism is an ‘Anglo-American invention’, especially in its presumed alignment with democratic values and the ‘fourth estate’. In the mid-1990s, James Carey (1996) was able to claim, ‘Journalism is another name for democracy or, better, you cannot have journalism without democracy’. Since then, such a position has been critiqued by many, including journalist-scholar Barbie Zelizer, who dryly notes that ‘democracy in journalism scholarship has over-extended its shelf life’ (2013, p. 1). She adds, ‘circumstances show that democracy has not been necessary for journalism, and the idea that democracy is the lifeline of journalism has not been supported on the ground’ (p. 7). According to Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch (2020a, b, p. 9), the association of journalism with democracy is principally a ‘Western imposition’ which ignores the fact that journalism in ‘many countries around the world […] remains a central institution in the absence of democracy’. In terms of investigative journalism, it is likewise the case that the mythos of the Watergate investigation and US muckraking tends to overshadow the many alternative types of journalism in places where democracy is absent. Nowadays, the Internet allows for transnational and cross-disciplinary collaboration around the globe, transcending local conditions of practice including the possibility of retribution meted out to the journalists themselves. The need to include more of the world’s journalistic practices in any comprehensive understanding of contemporary investigative journalism has recently been addressed by Hugo de Burgh and colleagues (2021), and we echo their call here.

There are, of course, always exceptions to the traditional alignment between investigative journalism and the defence of democracy wherein local practices in the Global South, for example, must reckon with local media ecologies and their attendant limitations (Waisbord, 2000). Therefore, the relation between investigative journalism and democracy must be studied and situated within those local mediascapes and conditions (Bebawi, 2016). One emerging attempt to localise journalistic practice in the context of the Global South and ‘decolonise data journalism’ (European Journalism Centre, 2020) involves the work of Eva Constantaras and her team to train and support journalists in Kenya. Among other things, the team offered datasets and a ‘data story recipe’ (a step-by-step guide to exploring data and producing stories) to local reporters to help them thrive within their own local context. Constantaras highlights the questions her work addresses about local data journalism:

How do we make it more representative of communities; how do we make sure people from those communities can actually enter data journalism; and how do we make sure audiences actually read the data journalism that’s been produced about them? (European Journalism Centre, 2020, 1:50)

As a result of this work, data journalism involving COVID-19 was published by local journalists in local languages for local Kenyan communities. We will look at other such projects in the Global South later in this book.

Plan of the Book

In The Crisis of the Institutional Press, Stephen Reese (2021, p. 175) calls for a better understanding of hybrid journalistic institutions:

The hybrid institution has taken on new forms beyond the traditional news organization, which has led me to rethink where the institution still lies in the myriad new networks and assemblages where journalism happens, and how it can be identified in the essential values that characterize this form of civic scepticism.

As outlined at the start of this chapter, this book is structured to discuss the growth of hybridity in investigative journalism through three different types of crises that trigger investigations: (1) organisational crises in the practice of journalism itself; (2) sudden crises or ‘critical events’; (3) and ‘global’ crises. Part 2 focuses on organisational crises, and Part 3 focuses on both sudden crises and global crises. The individual chapters within these parts consist of both theoretical and practical explorations featuring different structural and methodological approaches. This range represents a deliberate attempt to fashion a holistic scientific approach to understanding hybridity in investigative reporting practices.

Following the present chapter, which maps relevant literature and considers the state of investigative journalism during a time of great transformation, Part 2 presents three case studies where hybridity is being formed and negotiated within organisational structures. Chapter 2 introduces the various hybrid elements of investigative journalism and the types of crises which supplied our cases. Chapter 3 discusses Bristol Cable, which sought to fill the ‘black holes’ in local journalism left by the departure of certain media organisations via the direct involvement of community voices. Chapter 4 investigates Bureau Local, which developed various kinds of local collaborations spearheaded by the hybridised roles of new actors. Chapter 5 looks at the various hybrid initiatives adopted by the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism, including its international collaborations with global organisations such as the ICIJ. Chapter 6 presents further discussion of the cases and concludes Part 2.

Part 3 of the book includes three independently published articles engaging with the ways in which investigative journalism has been reconstructed in the context of a crisis such as the Charlie Hebdo 2015 terror attack in Paris, which resulted in the founding of the Forbidden Stories, or the COVID-prompted innovations in data-journalism practice at VG. In this part of the book, we explore what we call ‘hybrid elements’ in emerging organisations which are focused on investigative journalism and holding power to account. Chapter 7 looks at how investigative cross-border collaboration has grown in the digital era through the case study of Forbidden Stories. Chapter 8 traces the implementation of a COVID-19 live tracker at VG and the innovative investigative reporting which accompanied it. Chapter 9 extends this discussion by looking into the respective impacts of COVID-19 on the practice of investigative journalism in Norway and China. Chapter 10 offers a concluding discussion addressing the different manifestations of hybridity we encountered in our studies of the practice of investigative journalism today. The book ends with a call to raise the awareness of both professionals and academics of the promise of hybridisation for the ongoing development of investigative journalism.