Digging deeper, this time around.


For the second year, consecutively, I was at the conference which from the outset might seem like something to do with digging, as I had mentioned in my post last year, Gräv,  means to dig. This edition of the investigative journalism conference was organized in the lovely city of Jönköping, which lies kissing the tail of a big blue patch on the Swedish map – the second largest lake – Vättern.

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Jönköping, ashore

The conference was preceded by a day-long workshop for the participants from the Swedish Institute. The workshop was a focused training and interaction event from expert journalists. Nils Hanson from the SVT, Sven Bergman and other popular speakers from the Swedish media facilitated exciting workshops, covering topics ranging from how they conduct scoops, to tips on journalism to us, and interaction with an assorted bunch of invited journalists from different countries. There were two journalists from India; I had worked indirectly with one of them, but had not met.  Serendipity it seems, that I met the journalist from Bangalore here in this conference, who also happens to live in my proximity back home.

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The conference was over two days, on the 20th and 21st of March. With new insights and inspiring sessions from investigative journalists, who have many a times risked their lives to report stories shared their experiences in lectures through the two days. More scintillating were the interactions between sessions. Heartrending stories of struggle from Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and other troubled zones of the world were the focal point of most of the sessions.

As I hold interest in digital security and internet freedom, I was curious to extract some opinions from the event, and I ran a survey on the increase in awareness about digital security post Snowden revelations about mass surveillance. The survey seems to affirm my hypothesis, about which I will soon write in detail on another platform.

As with last edition of Grav, I return enriched with new experiences and tools, and more importantly abundant inspiration.