Investigative journalism: great return on investment

Between fines and recovered funds, journalists get results

Lately a couple of us here at the University of Navarra have been looking for models of high-quality journalism that are sustainable. As it turns out, many of the best news organizations that are thriving are doing investigative journalism.

Readers like this type of journalism, which holds the powerful accountable for their actions, makes them responsible for serving the public rather than themselves.

In a 2016 article, two leaders of global investigative journalism organizations made the case that investigative journalism actually has a great return on investment, ROI.

Versión en español

"Over the years [Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)] has accepted $5 million in funding from the U.S. and other governments. The return on that funding? With $2.8 billion recovered in fines and seized assets by various governments, the payoff is over 56,000 percent (or a 560-fold return)".
The authors of that article were  David E. Kaplan, executive director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network, and Drew Sullivan, one of the founders of OCCRP.

Investigative journalists form alliance in Latin America

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The United States has been the world's biggest market for just about everything, including illegal drugs, and that creates big problems for its neighbors.

Carla Minet

Versión en español

So much money from the drug trade flows into Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean that it corrupts governments, courts, police, armed forces, trade regulators, and other institutions that were not that strong to begin with.

The result is that many of these countries are ruled, de facto, by the whims of organized crime and not in the public interest. Criminal organizations have gone global, and investigative journalists need to go global as well in order to expose this corruption and serve their communities better. 

Cross-border cooperation was the big takeaway from a three-day meeting of investigative journalists from 17 countries in San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 4-6. Billed as "The First Caribbean Meeting of Investigative Journalists: Tracking the Stories that Connect Us" (in Spanish), one aim was to create a counterweight to the power of organized crime by cooperating across borders, according to Carla Minet, executive director of the host organization, the Center of Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico. Sponsors included the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations.