Breivik’s plan was first to car-bomb the SKUP conference and then attack survivors with firearms and a flamethrower, according to a manifesto he wrote. He told the court that he regretted not having enough time to make the bomb, and decided to shift his target to the Utoya camp. “I worked really hard to realize that but I was unfortunately unable to carry out the attack on the conference,” Breivik told the proceeding.

The SKUP conference, one of the world’s largest annual gatherings of investigative journalists, attracted a record 677 participants last year. Among them were many of Norway’s top journalists, as well as such international speakers as Nick Davies and David Leigh of The Guardian, Brigitte Alfter of the European Fund for Investigative Journalism, Paul Myers of the BBC, Robin Fields of ProPublica, and Paul Radu of OCCRP.

“We were shocked to learn this week that he in fact had us as Plan A,” said Jan Gunnar Furuly, president of SKUP. “It is frightening to see what kind of screwed up image he has created of Norway and the world, and how he portrays the role of media.”

An extreme rightist, Breivik blamed journalists, politicians, scholars and Muslims for committing “cultural Marxist/multiculturalist atrocities and the threat of Islamisation.”

Breivik laid out his plans for SKUP in the 1500-page manifesto he wrote before the attacks:

“There are annual gatherings for journalists in all Western European countries. These gatherings are considered THE MOST attractive targets for large scale shock attacks due to the amount and quality of category B traitors. To illustrate; in Norway, there is an annual gathering called the SKUP conference (the organization for critical and investigative press) where the most notable journalists/editors from all the nations media/news companies attend (500 delegates – 98% of them are considered “quality category B traitor targets”. The conference lasts for 2 days and is usually organized at a larger hotel/conference center. Security is light or non-existent making the conference a perfect target.

“Overview:

“· Targets: a concentration of 500 category B traitors

“· Primary/initial assualt method: 1-3 source detonation (vehicle based “barrack buster” covered with several layers of projectiles for maximum damage, f example small steel projectiles)

“· Goal: collapse of building causing maximum casualties coupled with secondary assault method

“· Secondary assault method: flame thrower, assault rifles, grenades, executing the survivors
of the initial blast(s).”

Unable to gather enough bomb material before the spring conference, Breivik set his sights elsewhere. Before attacking Utoya, he exploded a car bomb that day outside government buildings in downtown Oslo, killing eight people. His other targets, according to his manifesto: major media organizations, Labor Party headquarters, and the royal palace.

In Tønsberg, Norway, more than 600 journalists gathered for the annual conference of SKUP, the Stiftelsen for en Kritisk og Undersøkende Presse (Foundation for Critical and Investigative Press). Speakers came from 11 countries. Fifty entries competed in SKUP’s annual investigative reporting awards, and the winners included reports on consulting firm McKinsey & Co., medical insurance decisions, road accident data, and the underground trade in bomb chemicals. Tweets for the conference can be found by searching #skup12.

Sweden’s investigative journalism association, Gravande Journalister (Digging Journalists) hosted 830 journalists at its annual conference, held in Malmo, Sweden. The conference honored nine stories with awards, including reports on police incompetence in counterterrorism, questionable business in the railway, advertising, and health care industries, NATO ties, and DNA technology. Tweets for the conference can be found by searching for #gräv12; more on the gathering (in Swedish) at the Grav12 conference site.

Meanwhile, in Hamburg, Germany, more than 130 journalists and journalism students gathered for a two-day conference on data journalism, organized by Netzwerke Recherche. The conference featured more than 40 panels and hands-on sessions, with speakers from Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and the US talking about the basics of computer-assisted reporting, data visualization, text mining, and more. Hands-on sessions included social network analysis, mapping, spreadsheets and database managers, Web research, and Google tools. Tweets from the conference can be found by searching for #drg12.

Participants crowd a room to listen to lightning talks – 5 minutes for each speaker.

The conference, which offered more than 150 panels and hands-on classes, began with a day devoted to covering elections. It then moved to its main day program that covered dozens of topics, including basic data analysis, archiving and using social media for breaking and investigative stories, text-mining, visualization of data, creating and using apps, web scraping and mapping.

Cutting edge in CAR
Among the countries represented were Argentina, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. A large number of students also attended and speakers came from the journalism profession and computer science.

“We have been thrilled with the energy, excitement and attendance at the CAR Conference the past couple of years,” said Mark Horvit, executive director of IRE. “The conference has always focused on ways to use data to dig up information, find patterns and tell stories that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.”

He added, “ We’ve worked to maintain that focus while presenting the cutting edge in CAR, and to bring in speakers working with the latest technology that journalists can use in the pursuit of truth.”

Tipsheets
Tip sheets and presentations are already available on various Web pages constructed by attendees and the twitter traffic at #nicar12 is being collected. There are also blogs on the conference and IRE will organize all the tip sheets and presentations more thoroughly in the near future.

The resource materials range from how to collect and use social media postings for investigations to advanced programming for presentation of information on the Web.

The NICAR conference in St. Louis was close to the famous Gateway Arch.

The Global Center for Investigative Journalism, which has been created by long-time investigative journalist David Kaplan, will help coordinate Network activities such conference planning and the Web site and social media.

A memo of understanding outlines the work to be performed by the center. The arrangement will be reviewed in June to see whether it should be continued.

Five categories for Storify-use

Mallary Jean Tenore posted a really good overview at Poynter.org on November 21, 2011:

She said 5 types of stories that make a good Storify are:

Social movements: Like Occupy Wall Street.
Breaking News: Like the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
Internet Humor: Like this Danish for progress [link] as the new
brand for Aarhus.
Reaction stories: Clipping the important conversations together.
Weather: Disasters – video clip from victims and others.

In her overview Mallary Jean Tenore brings a lot of good tips on how to use Storify as one element together with other elements in a coverage. It’s also a good idea to follow Storify’s own overview of the best use of their tool.

I will add one more category: Investigative stories. And like her I will sub-divide the use in four types.

1 – Saving tweets for later restructuring

It’s a big problem that tweets disappear after a short period. If you use a hashtag to follow an event, tweets is only to be found for very
few days. Making a Storify with the important tweets from that event can be crucial for later potential for restructuring what actually happened.

2 – Making a first presentation of a problem
When covering an event sometimes the first hints to something more to cover is a bg topic of discussion at that event. We had two students, Anders Frost Brandstrup and Rasmus Hjorth Karkov, covering Denmark Open in badminton. They did this Storify (in Danish):

Chinese players accused for cheating
This is a fast way to mix tweets, Youtube-videos of discussed matches, interviews, and short overview. This means they during a really intensive work on the daily beat can do a fast collection of the material and present this. This is not the final investigative story, proving what happened, but a great starter.

3 – Uncovering false identities/tweets
A really important part of using social media is the question of reliability. Who can we trust out there? And who uses this fast system to spread false information. A new part of our job will then be to develop these methods, and to uncover the false identities.

A great example of a Storify on that has been done by the tweet-curator Andy Carvin from National Public Radio in US:

The  Gay Girl in Damascus that wasn’t

4 -Sharing methods
Participating in conferences on investigative journalism will give you a lot of tweets for that specific conference, using the conference-hashtag. That’s a great tool during the conference, but who has time to check it all out during the conference. And soon after all tweets are gone.

I would love to have a well-structured Storify of the important tools, links and advices from such a conference. For making this handout, I couldn’t find one from the latest conferences I have been to. But it will soon follow.

Other areas of use

These categories and examples show a clear starting point with obvious advantages of using Storify. But we will see all this develop rapidly. Try out the possibilities – whenever a story or topic has a great potential for being tweeted about or in other ways trigger the use of social media.

Look at Storify’s website to follow examples.

The new African News Innovation Challenge (ANIC) is designed to encourage experimentation in digital technologies and support the best innovations that strengthen African news organizations.

AMI chief executive Amadou Mahtar Ba first announced the fund at the 4th African Media Leaders Forum in Tunisia on November 10. This week, Ba confirmed that Omidyar Network, Google, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, and the U.S. Department of State have all pledged either funding or technical support for the initiative.

The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers has also committed expert business mentorship and marketing support for ANIC winners.

“Traditional media are still growing in Africa, but media organizations know that they need to go digital and mobile to prepare for the future. Many, however, don’t have the resources to experiment or take risks, especially in this economic climate,” said Ba. “This competition is our way of saying: ‘We’re here to help. If you come up with an innovative idea to improve the African media landscape, we’ll help make it happen.’”

Winners in the annual contest will get seed grants ranging from $12,500 to a maximum of $100,000 for more ambitious projects. To build robust business models, the grantees will also receive technical advice and start-up support, as well as one-on-one mentoring from some of the world’s leading media experts.

“We’re trying to nurture a culture of innovation in African media,” said AMI’s digital strategist and ANIC project manager Justin Arenstein. “We want the winners to get their products to the market quickly, and we want to remove as much risk as possible. These pioneers will have access to experts that most media simply do not have.”

Arenstein is working with AMI as part of a Knight International Journalism Fellowship administered by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), with funds from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The contest will target solutions to technology challenges facing African media, including ways to strengthen data-based investigative journalism, audience engagement, mobile news distribution, data visualization, revenue streams and workflow systems.

“We’re casting the net as wide as possible,” said Arenstein. “As long as the solution is scalable and appropriate to local market conditions, we’re happy to consider it.”

The competition is modeled after Knight Foundation’s highly successful Knight News Challenge, which has seeded news media innovation across the globe over the past five years. “We will work closely with Knight Foundation to incorporate the best practices and technology for a digital news contest designed to solve problems and stimulate new thinking,” said Joyce Barnathan, president of the International Center for Journalists.

AMI will launch the contest website in December 2011. In the first phase, African journalists and publishers will be asked to identify the most pressing challenges facing the industry. Once these have been identified, AMI will issue a call for applications targeting these issues in February 2012.

Winners will be chosen through a rigorous two-phase judging process, consisting of public voting and a review of finalists by a panel of experts. The top contenders will receive a combination of cash and technical support.

Winners will then test their innovations in AMI member-newsrooms and showcase projects at international media gatherings.

The African innovation contest is part of AMI’s broader initiative to build digital entrepreneurship within traditional media. AMI is also supporting a new network of HacksHackers.com chapters across Africa that will bring technologists together with journalists to help pilot projects in digital media. The chapters will run workshops and help incubate ideas for the African News Innovation Challenge.

The African Media Initiative is the continent’s primary umbrella association of African media owners, top executives, and other industry stakeholders. AMI represents media across all traditional platforms plus newer digital formats. AMI’s mandate is to serve as a catalyst for strengthening African media, by building the tools, knowledge resources, and technical capacity for African media to overcome key constraints so that they can play an effective public interest role in society. This mandate includes assisting with the development of professional standards, financial sustainability, technological adaptability, and civic engagement. AMI seeks to achieve its mandate through partnerships, advocacy and strategic projects. For more information, visit www.africanmediainitiative.org.

The International Center for Journalists is a non-profit organization that advances quality journalism worldwide. Our programs combine the best professional standards with the latest digital innovations. We believe that independent, vigorous media are crucial in improving the human condition. For more information, visit www.icfj.org.

http://www.icfj.org/news/leading-african-media-organization-announces-1-million-fund-news-innovation