Cross border scheme required cross-border reporting

He thought he was going to meet a source - part of his research into land fraud involving organised crime. Instead Don Bolles, reporter at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, was so heavily injured by a car bomb, that the doctors could not save him, even though they struggled for days.

This happened in 1976, and some of his colleagues, reporters and editors, had only one year previous founded the association for Investigative Reporters and Editors. They decidde to finish his research and granted time to exactly that. The action got later known as the Arizona Project, and is considered one of the set-offs for investigative journalists cooperating more intensely.

While US colleagues started to cooperate on investigative journalism already in 1975, European journalists began to found investigative associations only in the late 1980ies, when Denmark (1989), Sweden and Norway (1990) and Finland (1992) founded associations for investigative journalism.

The next move came around the first Global Investigative Conference, which was held in Copenhagen in 2001. In these years, Germany and Netherlands/Flanders founded their associations for investigative journalism, in Romania the  Romanian Center for Investigative Reporting was founded in 2001 too.

Since then various initiatives, projects and organisations supporting research journalism are growing, thus providing fertile soil for further developments, most recently Switzerland and Italy have been founding networks or organisations for investigative journalism.

The overall aim is to further research and quality journalism. This is done by exchanging best experiences, developing, sharing and improving new methods and through networking.

The Global Investigative Journalism network meets every 18-24 months, with conferences in Copenhagen in 2001 and 2003, in Amsterdam in 2005, in Toronto in 2007 and in Lillehammer in 2008. The next conferences will be held in Geneva in 2010 and in Kiev in 2011.