Global Investigative Journalism Oral History - Incite at Columbia University

Today, increasing attacks on the free press from authoritarian governments and powerful figures threaten to undo the work of a generation of investigative journalists who built a global accountability press. 

In country after country, investigative reporting — often against long odds and powerful opposition — has made a difference. Journalists have exposed corruption, harm, and wrongdoing that has changed laws, triggered presidential resignations, and saved economies billions.

Experts have documented the crucial role of an accountability press to functioning democracies, but focused far less attention on chronicling how that press grew globally. 

In the last 50 years, investigative journalism spread to virtually every corner of the globe, led by an international group of likeminded reporters, who came together as the world itself became more connected. They built a global network to train, support, and collaborate with each other, united by their dedication to the values of accountability and transparency. Few of these investigative leaders have told their stories, and there is no comprehensive history of the spread of this vital work or the people behind it.

It is now more important than ever to record the history, methods, and accomplishments of this movement. The Global Investigative Journalism Oral History (GIJOH) project seeks to record, preserve, and present the histories of these people, their work, and the community they created.

In 2025, Incite provided seed funding to support the first year of the project, including collection of some of the most central and time-sensitive interviews. The project is currently seeking additional funding to support its development over the next three to five years, which includes four central goals:

• Record personal narratives of the people who built the modern network of investigative reporters. This includes 20-30 key narrators who played central roles in that process, along with dozens of other people instrumental to the spread of investigative reporting methods in their countries.
• Build a physical and digital archive documenting their meetings, organizations, and most important reporting projects, hosted in multiple locations to protect against erasure.
• Support international investigative journalists and organizations to tell and preserve their culturally specific histories, through collaboration, training, and assistance.
• Turn the collection into accessible teaching tools for international journalists, scholars, and students by creating lessons based on specific investigations and making the archive available to future generations globally by hosting it in multiple languages.

The envisioned full project will include interviews in the preferred language of as many as 300 journalists who played key roles in this movement in their own regions and countries, and an infrastructure to host the archive in regional hubs, to safeguard it from threat by any one government.

Led by Adiel Kaplan, an investigative journalist and adjunct professor at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, this project sits at the intersection of journalism and oral history. The funded project will be housed at Incite, in partnership with the Stabile Center.

For inquiries on how to support this work, contact Adiel Kaplan.