Indian Scribe Elected To Global Investigative Forum

Guwahati: New Delhi based senior journalist Syed Nazakat has been elected to the board of directors of Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), a Washington DC based international media body. Nazakat ran unopposed to become the representative for the Asia Pacific region and he would serve a two-year term in the forum. Besides Asia/Pacific, the GIJN reserves board seats for Europe, Africa, Middle East/North Africa, North America and Latin America.

Mentionable is that the GIJN, which is an international association of more than 100 media organizations from over 50 countries, regularly holds conferences, conducts trainings, provides resources & consulting to strengthen & promote the watchdog reporting across the globe. GIJN's second Asian investigative journalism conference is scheduled to be held in Kathmandu on 23-25 September 2016.

Nakazat is an award-winning Indian journalist and editor-in-chief of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, a non-profit organization founded to promote the cause of watchdog journalism in the country. In 2015 he also set-up a data journalism start-up called DataLEADS which conducts data analysis, boot camps and also runs India’s first data-driven website dedicated to healthcare reporting, called Health Analytics India. He has more than 16 years of experience across broadcast, print and online journalism, and reported from over 25 countries.

The other board members of the GIJN include Eva Jung (senior journalist from Copenhagen), Anton Harber (journalism faculty at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg), Carlos Eduardo Huertas (director of CONNECTAS, America), Oleg Khomenok (media advisor of Internews Network, Ukraine), Bruce Shapiro (executive director of Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, Columbia University) and Margo Smit (ombudsman at Dutch public broadcaster NOS).