Welcome to Our training and Mentorship program Investigate 28's Page
Welcome to Our training and Mentorship program Investigate 28's Page
A CALL FOR STORY IDEAS
M28 Media Center / M28 Investigates is launching an investigative documentary unit. We're looking for the best of our training and mentorship program alumni to help us find and tell original, hard-hitting stories from across the country. This page / Document tells you what we're looking for and how you can pitch your ideas with us.
INVESTIGATIVE DOCUMENTARIES AND DIGITAL VIDEO
As of our mentorship and training program “Investigate 28” we will produce 15 major investigations this year (every year). Some will be documentary films (30 and 60 minutes), shown on our YouTube channel and on partner TV stations across the region . Others will be digital projects made for mobile phones and the social web. These digital projects will include short and mid-form video, as well as text, photography, dataviz, audio, and interactive formats. M28 Investigates will not produce all these stories from our newsroom. Instead, we are now asking for ideas from all of the Investigate 28’s Participants.
You do not have to be an experienced documentary maker in order to pitch us. What you need is an original, compelling story and great access to its central characters and locations. When an idea goes into production, we will build whatever team is needed to deliver the project. Providing camera operators, executive producers, even forensic accountants to help dig out and tell the story. What we're looking for are great story ideas and great access.
Investigate 28 Alumni will tell all these stories. This is an opportunity for young and new journalists to step outside the 24-hour news cycle, class and to spend months digging in to some ambitious, important investigations.
WHAT KIND OF STORIES ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
We're looking for original, gripping, ambitious stories that are of intense interest and concern to Rwandan audiences. If these stories reach an audience outside Rwanda, fine - but that's not our objective. We're focusing on stories that Rwandans want to hear. These stories must be of more than purely local interest. We want stories that will fascinate viewers across the Rwanda, not just in one District. We're only doing 15 stories a year, so we want to find the best 15 stories from the entire country. So INVESTIGATE 28 Participants “Think big.”
INVESTIGATIVE
We're looking for stories that uncover new information, expose serious wrongdoing, and hold power to account. The more ambitious these investigations, the more interesting they are. We're not aiming to take down people on the lower rungs of the ladder of corruption or crime. Aim high. If you're pitching an investigative story, ask yourself Where is the wrongdoing?' Who is the target?' 'How can I prove this?'
HARD ACCESS
We want to take audiences into situations they've never seen before. This means getting into difficult, inaccessible places - behind frontlines, behind the closed doors of governments or businesses, inside prisons, mafias, mobs, cartels, or gangs of scammers, smugglers, or terrorists. If you have special access to these hidden stories, we'd like to hear from you.
SOCIAL INVESTIGATIONS
As well as hard investigations, we're interested in social issues that are of urgent concern in the lives of young Rwandans. Rapid urbanization and social change are creating tensions around education and work, sex and gender, social taboos, drugs, childhood, technology, and family relationships. We're looking for fresh, dramatic human stories that take us deep into these themes.
COMPELLING CHARACTERS
We're always interested in stories built around a strong character in a difficult or dynamic situation. If you know someone remarkable who's doing something challenging or different, tell us.
WHO ARE WE TRYING TO REACH?
Rwanda has the youngest audiences in the Region. Content from all over the world is pouring onto their phones via social feeds - music videos on YouTube, drama on Netflix, funny videos on WhatsApp. To cut through this level of noise, and to overcome high levels of tragic-news- fatigue, we need more than tired stories of conflict and corruption. We need stories with real urgency and immediacy, stories that are fresh and moving, stories that look like they have come from the streets of Rwanda rather than from the newsrooms of M28 Investigates.
ACCESS – THE KEY TO GETTING A COMMISSION
We repeat the point that access is crucial. There's no point sending an incredible story idea if you can't find a way to get inside that story, get the main characters on camera, and film the action as it unfolds. You do not need to have all the access fully secured at pitching stage, but you do need at least the beginning of a way in to your story.
ACTION – NOT JUST INTERVIEWS
A lot of pitches just portraits of victims or static situations, or interviews about something that happened ago (and which we do not have on film). This is not enough. We need stories with movement and drama, and we need to see that action unfolding on camera. Before you pitch, ask yourself what we're going to see on the screen. Is it compelling? Do you have the access required to shoot this?
HOW TO PITCH US
Write us an email outlining the idea in a short paragraph or two (not more than 300-500 words). We will reply, letting you know if we want to discuss it further, usually by phone. If you have confidential information that you do not want to put in an email, let us know and we'll send you details of how to contact us via the secure messaging app Signal or via proton mail encrypted email.
CONTACTS
info@m28investigates.com