By Adam Wakefield

Strydom began her media career as a newsreader and host on UJfm in 2005. Time would later see her work for, among others, a newspaper in Port Alfred, both Classic FM and Eyewitness News as a field reporter, the Mail & Guardian as a night editor, a freelance editor and writer, and lastly, her current position at ANCIR.

It was never a conscious decision to work across so many different forms of media, rather her taking the opportunities that presented themselves at the time.

“The journalism bug bit when I started working for UJfm as a news reader and later as a show host. I ended up studying journalism and worked as an intern at Classic FM,” Strydom says.

“I started in digital journalism as a junior editor for Mail & Guardian Online and fell in love. Digital media demands a whole range of skills. You could never just be a sub-editor. As part of a small team, I wrote breaking news stories, edited wire and in-house copy, wrote and recorded voice overs with the multimedia team and much more.”

The experience of working in radio also gave Strydom the opportunity to co-host M&G Newsroom, an hour-long news discussion show presented on 2OV.

“I think classifying yourself as a medium-specific journalist would close so many exciting doors. As a journalist, you’re a storyteller and you want to embrace technology to make the story better,” Strydom says.

Being at an investigative nerve centre

As managing editor at the ANCIR, Strydom’s role is to commission stories, assist with editing, manage projects, and make sure stories are made visible. She’s had the opportunity to work with a range of investigative newsrooms across the continent and to work on big cross-border collaborations such as Panama Papers.

“A big part of what I do is also relationship managing. We are in conversation with our newsroom partners all the time to connect them to grants, to offer and receive story ideas, and to see where we can assist with training,” Strydom says.

This is especially important as the ANCIR is a network of newsrooms across the continent, with Strydom and her colleagues working with newsrooms to tell data stories.

“This would include offering technical support from our incubator, Code for Africa, and data boot-camps. Another service is our Investigative Laboratory, which gives newsrooms access to scarce resources - data wranglers, forensic economists, and prosecutorial editors,” Strydom explains.

“Once stories have been produced, ANCIR syndicates these with partner media across the continent, which gives it a bigger audience.”

The work the ANCIR does is critical, as Strydom believes investigative journalism across Africa, and around the world, is facing tough times. As media spending decreases, it is harder to keep a team of investigative journalists on the payroll who often need months to do a story.

“Our network’s reporting on the Panama Papers investigation had journalists working on stories for up to four months, which meant they weren’t filing hourly/daily/weekly stories,” Strydom says.

“Another challenge we face is a lack of skills to process and visualise big data stories. It requires time and different skill sets to do this. Often, you would need a developer, a graphic designer, a data cruncher and a writer to put together one project.”

A lack of funds severely hampers the ability to tell good stories, so ANCIR offer training and support to tell these stories, as well as funding when available to do projects. Through ANCIR’s network, the opportunity exists to cross-border investigations, and access to organisations such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism and the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

“We don’t intend to do investigations, but rather empower newsrooms with resources, training and tools to tell better stories. We also offer a whistleblowing platform to investigative newsrooms, called afriLEAKS,” Strydom says.

“Whisteblowers can alert newsrooms of possible wrongdoing through a secure and maintained platform. ANCIR can offer support to investigate these claims. This means newsrooms can accept documents without having to keep them on their own servers.”

With ANCIR’s servers hosted beyond Africa, it is far more difficult for courts to subpoena the whistleblower.

Investigative journalism is unlike anything in the industry

Asked what advice she would have for budding journalists interested in becoming investigative specialists, Strydom says it is not an industry for the faint-hearted.

“It’s a tough industry and one you have to be really committed to. My advice would be to do different subjects alongside your journalism course - i.e. do economics or politics or sciences, depending on your interests,” Strydom advises.

“A journalist who can read a balance sheet is already able to tell whether there’s something fishy going on, which would require further questions.”

In Strydom’s experience, many young journalists believe they will become investigative reporters the moment they leave university, when the reality is different.

“Rather, become a reporter, build a network of sources, and find the stories.”

For more information, connect with Strydom on Twitter.