Monday 26 to Wednesday 28 October
At Wits University, Education campus
Wits Journalism invites you to Power Reporting 2009, the African Investigative Journalism Conference.
For crime and court reporters and journalists, and anyone interested in how the SA justice systems works, the third day will highlight the new Wits Justice Project, which aims to use the skills of investigative journalists in getting people out of prison. Speakers will include:
- Raphael Rowe, who spent 12 years in a British prison for a wrongful conviction and now reports for BBC Panorama about similar cases
- Jim Nichol, a British criminal lawyer who has spent 20 years righting wrongful convictions
- Jeremy Gordin, director of the Wits Justice Project.
On other days we will highlight sport and financial journalism with:
- Andrew Jennings, author of Foul: The secret world of Fifa , tracking his investigation of corruption within the organisation (Monday).
- Danny Schechter, author of Plunder: Investigating our Economic Calamity and the Sub-Prime Scandal on the crisis of financial journalism (Tuesday).
- There are a range of hands-on courses and workshop:
Computer-assisted reporting
A series of hands-on computer lab classes, to improve your research skills, train you to find data and analyse it, to provide the facts you need to support stories.
Business and finance
Top financial journalists will teach you where to find company information, and once you’ve got it how to read it and use it in stories.
The right to know
Can’t find the facts? Find out how to use South Africa’s Promotion of Access to Information Act.
Skills for investigative journalists
How to organise your investigation, work across borders, work undercover or embedded in your story.
The future of investigative journalism
With the pressure on budgets in print and broadcasting, who will pay for in-depth reporting? We look at alternative funding models, and how computers are shaping our investigative world.
This year, Wits Journalism has teamed up with the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR) to become The African Investigative Journalism Conference, a part of the Global Investigative Journalism Network.
For more information and registration forms visit our website: www.journalism.co.za/powerreporting
or email Nomfundo.engler@wits.ac.za
Cost: R2000 for the three days or R700 for one day (with a 10% discount for early booking)
Jim Nichol
is one of Britain’s leading criminal lawyers. For over 25 years he has specialised in investigating miscarriages of justice and obtaining the release of innocent people who have been wrongly sent to prison. Throughout he has worked in partnership with journalists many of whom have, as a result of their own commitment to right a wrong, provided decisive new evidence of innocence. He believes that as a consequence of campaigns in the media for the freeing of innocent prisoners, government, judges, and law makers are compelled to reform criminal procedures and provide safeguards for those arrested.
Raphael Rowe
was sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder and robbery he did not commit in 1988. He was just 19. Twelve years later the UK Court of Appeal quashed his convictions and he was freed. He went to work for the BBC, and became the first person of mixed race to report for it’s prestigious radio morning news programme. He now works for the BBCs flagship Panorama television programme. He investigated the murder of Jill Dando and cast doubts on the firearms forensic evidence used at the trial of Barry George, who was convicted of killing the BBC TV presenter. In August 2008, Barry George was acquitted at a retrial and freed
MARGARET RENN
Visiting Fellow, Investigative Journalism
Dept of Journalism, Wits University
Office: 011 717 4043
Cell: 07606 04815
Click here to download schedule
