From the editor
Hiding in plain sight.
That’s the kind of story Open Vallejo executive editor Geoffrey King knew he had when he received a tip that officers in the Vallejo, California police department, one of America’s deadliest law enforcement agencies, were bending the points of their badges to mark on-duty killings.
To report out the story, King conducted an open-source investigation using information that was also hiding in plain sight: publicly available photographs of Vallejo police badges — gleaned from the city’s website, the department’s official social media accounts, and officers’ often-pseudonymous personal Facebook profiles as well as his own photographs of badges taken at public events — and public records of shootings and other fatalities involving Vallejo police. When Open Vallejo published its story in July 2020, Vallejo’s mayor confirmed the badge-bending practice, and the new police chief announced a third-party investigation.
Open-source investigations (OSI) are based on any information that can be publicly accessed, including but not limited to online sources. As satellite imagery becomes more accessible and social media images become even more profuse, newsrooms as small as Open Vallejo (King’s was a one-person operation when he published the badge story) and as large as the New York Times and Washington Post have started integrating open-source methods into their coverage. In our piece on the uses and ethics of open-source methodology, Maxim Edwards, an editor with OSI pioneer Bellingcat, chronicles how open-source investigations are being integrated into standard newsroom practice, spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For the team here at Nieman Reports, these pieces on OSI are among our favorite features of the year. As 2022 ends, we offer a few curated lists of articles we feel are worth a (re)read…
Nieman Reports’ Top 5 Feature Stories of 2022: From how the independent press is surviving in Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, and Georgia to why more newsrooms are making workplace safety, unionization, and remote work front-page stories
Nieman Reports’ Top 5 Interviews of 2022: From Chris Quinn, editor of cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer in Ohio, on why the paper would not cover a rally featuring Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance and Florida Gov. Rob DeSantis to the motivation for NPR’s Andrea Kissack and Neela Banjeree to establish a new desk dedicated to climate reporting
Nieman Reports’ Top 5 Opinion Pieces of 2022: From two-time Pulitzer winner Gil Gaul on why journalists should report on the connection between climate disasters and land use decisions made by local governments to Traverse City Record-Eagle reporter Mardi Link on the need to include the voices of adoptees in stories about how people waiting to adopt might benefit from the Supreme Court’s dismantling of Roe v. Wade
Nieman Reports’ Most Read Stories of 2022: From columnist Issac Bailey’s argument that Felicia Sonmez’s firing from the Washington Post highlights the limits of progress for women in the newsroom to contributor Julia Craven’s look at how personal branding has given reporters valuable autonomy — along with all the challenges associated with it
All the best from all of us at Nieman Reports.
Sincerely,
James Geary
Editor, Nieman Reports
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