Yes, this will be it! You are witness of my first blog about investigative and research journalism by blogging. What I am going to do is find out if blogging is a good way to do investigative and research journalism. And here we start.
What am I planning to do?
I will pick some topics, like why mobile roaming is still not as cheap as local calls, or why pricefighting airlines can offer so cheap flights. And I will start investigating this. The things I know for sure, but also any guesses, any speculation etc. will be blogged. And when I get to know facts, I will put links, references etc in the blog too. This way, everyone can follow the research done, comment and give tips on what I am thinking right or wrong, and everyone can give links that tell more.
I will not only rely on the internet sources. That would probably be very difficult. I also want to feel free to call people, interview them etc. And to put the results of that online too. This will be a more journalistic approach. But a journalist keeps its information for itself, and I will not. I will share it again, to make more research possible. Just like I hope that others will share their interviews too.
The risk, and how to handle it
The biggest risk of course is that I will get near a big hit, and that I have already blogged about that before I can publish anything in our magazine. Or even worse, I am soo near a hit, and then others find the missing link and get all the credit.
This risk is real. But does it matter? I think most people will link to my blog even in a newspaper, and if not, at least all those who follow the blog will know about it. See it as open source software. Yes, others can change it, add info and then republish it. But as in software, the result must be better to survive. And if you are doing research, isn’t it beautiful if we have better reseach that gets published?
Why am I going to do this?
I am an editor of indigo magazine
, a young serious lifestyle magazine for those that already feel European. We make the magazine with over 150 volunteers based all over Europe and we publish it in seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Dutch.
Making a European magazine has been much more difficult than we thought. Language and cultural differences, but also the distances between our volunteers have proven to be both a big asset and a pain in the ass. We are reinventing European journalism all the time, and investigative journalism by blogging is just an other way of experimenting.
I hope you will join me and read about, but also contribute to, the topics that I will be researching. I will not only work with the network where you read this email. I will also ask other networks if they want to help me out 
And if it is successfull, we publish the result in one of the next issues of indigo magazine.
This whole project will be done under creative commons, SA (Share Alike) and BY (by).
My first question to you guys: suggestions for topics to be researched. What do you think about mobile costs and cheap airlines?
(13 votes, average: 3.54 out of 5)
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Sounds very interesting, good luck with it!
Mobile costs as well as cheap airlines have been quite a prominent topic in EU debates which will probably make it difficult to find new angles.
However, I was always intrigued by the roaming issue and why it actually exits? Wouldn’t it be better to scrap the whole roaming thing (including data roaming) in order to boost Europe - wide competition? I am not an expert in this and probably I miss an important point here but from a consumer perspective these “virtual costs” do not make sense and, more importantly, restrict my communication habits while traveling (which I do quite often
Thanks for your comment, Andreas! And others, welcome to add your angle, even if you agree.
This is exactly what I want to find out if the roaming costs will be my first subject. Why do we have roaming costs? Is there a technical reason when skype can do it for free and phone companies can not? Or is the lobby in Europe winning from us poor Europeans that are traveling and spending huge amounts of money on phone costs. And from a political point of view, wouldn’t there be ways or views that can make one European mobile phone area?
For you, Andreas, and others. Please add questions and things you would like to know about roaming costs. After a while, I will make a new blog where I will include your best ideas
Personally I admit hat topics you mentioned are not interesting me. However to give answer to your question here some remarks:
1) Mobile costs - especially roaming - were big problem to me earlier- after Skype not anymore. The big problem can be the roaming costs of data when one use laptop abroad in mobile network. If I pay in Finland 9.90 € per month about this, the bill for one week abroad could be hundreds.
2) Cheap airline tickets are ok if the question is about direct connections. If the flights are not in same ticket you now the risk.
Hi Ari! The roaming of data is a very good point. Thanks!
Do I understand correctly that you are mentioning that if you have cheap airline tickets and there is a delay, that you will miss you connecting flight and that that risk is only yours?
@ all of you: I was thinking to research how it is possible to travel so cheap? And why are other airlines so expensive then? What is the role of governments and EU in this, and how is this role compared to trains, busses etc.?
@ Ari: You told that roaming and cheap airlines are not that interesting for you. Do you have other suggestions that I should research?
your initiative sounds really interesting! Journalistic detective hunt! Wish you all the best with it and hope that it will work out!
To Joe…,
topics of which I am interested: connection between military-industrial-complex profits and recent and coming conflicts, mainstream media as lapdog of governments, influence of organized crime in EU financial decisions, EUs (big powers) real motivations with enlargement etc.
Roaming can only be scrapped if there is a Europe-wide network. Not even T-Mobile or Vodafone has a real corporate presence in a significant percentage of EU27, so there will always be interconnection and call-completion charges from local carriers.
There is some progress, but not in Europe. There’s apparently a carrier named Zain, operating in some twenty-odd countries in North Africa and the Middle East, whose unique sales proposition is that it doesn’t have roaming charges as long as you’re in its own network. This has allowed it to become the communications provider for the UN, as well as the US military.
Ultimately it comes down to two things:
1) Voice is still the biggest revenue stream for carriers. Mobile data is subject to enough competition that they are forced to make it very cheap - 10 Euro a month for unlimited data makes it a loss leader. Combine that with handset subsidies, and carriers will not make voice comms anywhere near as cheap as SkypeOut. They just can’t.
2) Most people don’t travel often enough to really care about roaming charges. It might be comparatively expensive, but in absolute terms it’s only a few dozen Euro per year, and how many people are going to go to the hassle of changing carriers or setting up VoIP systems to save that?
I agree. Language and cultural differences are a big problem
If you have time, therefore, can I ask you to check http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a former translator with the United Nations
A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net