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At my first international investigative reporting conference, held in Moscow in September 1992, I had an exciting epiphany that the best investigative journalism is necessarily collaborative and thus requires reporters and editors to work together. Five years later, I founded the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for the Panama Papers and numerous other awards. A few days ago the ICIJ was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for its success in building journalistic collaborations across countries and oceans to increase transparency and accountability in the world.
My personal epiphany about the possibility of collaborative, across-border investigative reporting occurred in 1992, when I was invited to speak at an extraordinary international investigative journalism conference in Moscow — an historic event literally on the heels of the collapse of the Soviet Union and an attempted coup the preceding year. The journalist there whose global experience had the most compelling resonance for me was Phillip Knightley, the internationally renowned, London-based author and reporter who eloquently and indelibly stressed the paramount need for competitive, often paranoid, investigative reporters to help each other with information.