What will be "important stories" about

Roman Anin talks about the new media, which was founded by Russian journalists

Let's start with the name. We discussed it for a long time, and it seems that the majority agreed that it was not very. Nevertheless, no other name so accurately describes the type of journalism that we would like to deal with. “Important stories” is:

Not only about investigations or reports from “hot spots” (although we did and we will do it further);

Not about the number of signs in the texts (although, we admit, sometimes it brings us, but we will try to restrain ourselves);

And not only about the surnames and positions of the heroes (we have illuminated the disease of “big names”, and she no longer limits us in choosing the top).

For us, “important stories” are all that answers three questions that we ask each time before proceeding to a new topic:

Is this story really important for people?

How true is it?

Can we prove it with the help of documents or proven sources?

If for each of these questions we give ourselves a positive answer, then we take the topic. And although we believe that journalism is, first of all, to call power to answer, this does not mean that only stories about corruption or repressions from the state will be “important”.

In Russia today, the authorities are trying to make meanness the norm, and therefore what was the norm earlier - becomes heroism. We will look for and tell you about real heroes who have changed the world around us for the better-be it a village, district or city-contrary to corruption and arbitrariness of the state.

And in order to finish with the name (and finally confuse everything), we add that we have the second name - istories (abbreviated from the English phrase Important Stories). And this second name we need, this is why.

Many authors of “important stories” (or ISSTORIS-as you are convenient) are in the most prestigious international consorties of journalists-investigators. Our team worked in Russia on the already famous "Panama documents"; We took part in a whole series of investigations on laundering hundreds of billions of dollars by Russian and European banks, which led to the initiation of many criminal cases and changes in legislation in some European countries.

These projects and many others became possible thanks to the cooperation of hundreds of journalists from various countries of the world - from South Korea to Brazil. And so that our foreign colleagues do not break their tongue, trying to pronounce the Russian letter “g” (especially in combination with the letters “n” and “s”), we came up with the second name.

The reasoning about the name allowed me to switch to what we consider our main feature, what distinguishes us from other media.

We do not believe in competition - we believe in cooperation. The success of these international projects shows that the real power of journalism is in the association, in the joint efforts of hundreds of reporters to dig the most difficult topics. And this is especially true for Russia, where every year the number of independent media becomes less and less. If we do not unite, we just disappear.

Therefore, “important stories” will try to publish all their texts together with colleagues from both independent Russian and best foreign publications of the world.

The idea of ​​cooperation is inextricably linked with the idea of ​​the exchange of knowledge. Therefore, we want to actively share our skills and also actively adopt the experience of colleagues. For this, we, firstly, created the “Workshop” section on the site. There we will publish texts and videos devoted to both separate tools, necessary, for example, for the collection, analysis and visualization of data, as well as deeper topics: for example, we plan to lecture courses for programming languages ​​as Python and JavaScript.

Half of the journalists of “important stories” besides the fact that they can write texts (at least they think so), they also know how to write code. Our lectures on programming will be primarily intended for journalists who want to use the latest technologies in order to get and tell people the truth.

In addition, if you like any of our visualizations, or any of our methods for collecting information, or you will want to use the data we already collected, then you can pick them up for free from our public account in GitHub.

Pay attention to the slider with the other not very successful name “facts” (however, headlines are difficult for us). This slider will appear at the beginning of almost every our story. And it is intended primarily for those who do not believe us.

Applications in our publications are confirmed by many and many evidence, and in order not to distract you from reading these endless links to documents, we hid them. But if you want to check all our evidence, just switch the slider.

And finally, about who we belong, where we are and what we live on.

Most of the reporters of “important stories” live in Moscow: we believe that writing about our country without living in it is quite difficult.

But our editors are in Riga. We did it for security reasons. Unfortunately, the last 20 years the Russian authorities have been engaged in the systematic destruction of independent media (NTV, Kommersant, Lenta, RBC, now the “Vedomosti” - the list of victims can be continued for a long time). Therefore, we are aware that in Russia neither the law nor the court will protect us.

The "important stories" have no owner. And that means there is no one who can dictate the conditions. We are registered as a non -profit organization managed by the board of directors. In addition to the editors of “important stories”, it includes several journalists and media managers respected worldwide. The main charter goal of our organization is not profit, but the creation of a public good.

As a non -profit organization, we live on donations. Anyone in the world who wants to support independent journalism in Russia can become our donor. Soon we will launch a crowdfunding campaign, and such an opportunity will appear with you.

In general, we hope that you will be interested in us, and we will try to tell you only important stories.