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Essential Skills for Project Managers in Investigative Journalism

Successful project managers in investigative journalism must possess a mix of soft skills, hard skills, and technical know-how.

29 oktober 2025

To be a successful project manager – especially in investigative journalism or cross-border collaborations like those described in the GIJN guide – you need a blend of soft skills, hard skills, and technical know-how. Here’s a breakdown of the essentials:

🧠 Soft Skills (People & Leadership)

These are the interpersonal abilities that help you lead, communicate, and adapt:

Communication: Clear, empathetic, and timely communication across diverse teams and stakeholders
Leadership: Inspiring and guiding teams without micromanaging; setting the tone and culture
Problem-solving: Navigating unexpected challenges with calm and creativity
Time management: Prioritizing tasks and keeping projects on track
Adaptability: Pivoting when plans change or new information emerges
Conflict resolution: Mediating disagreements and maintaining team harmony
Emotional intelligence: Understanding team dynamics and responding with empathy

🛠️ Hard Skills (Project Execution)

These are learned competencies that help you manage the nuts and bolts of a project:

Planning & scheduling: Creating timelines, setting milestones, and adjusting as needed
Budgeting: Estimating costs, tracking expenses, and staying within financial limits
Risk management: Identifying potential threats and preparing contingency plans
Documentation: Keeping records, templates, and reports organized and accessible
Negotiation: Aligning team goals with external partners, funders, or vendors

💻 Technical Skills (Tools & Systems)

These help you leverage technology to streamline collaboration and security:

Project management software: Proficiency with tools like Trello, Asana, or Gantt charts
Secure communication: Using encrypted platforms like Signal or ProtonMail
Digital hygiene: Managing passwords, access controls, and secure file sharing
Data visualization: Presenting findings or progress in clear, compelling formats
Tool selection: Choosing the right tech stack based on team size, budget, and needs

🧩 Bonus Traits for Investigative Journalism Projects

Cultural sensitivity: Navigating cross-border collaborations with respect and awareness
Legal literacy: Understanding media law, defamation risks, and source protection
Editorial awareness: Knowing when to defer to the editorial lead and when to step in operationally

Conclusion

Whether you are working on a cross-border investigative project or coordinating a local collaboration, the success of your role as a project manager depends on your ability to balance these diverse skills. By strategically deploying soft skills, hard skills, and technical knowledge, you can not only execute projects efficiently, but also create a safe, inclusive, and productive working environment. Keep learning, keep listening, and keep building trust – that is the key to impactful journalism.

Happy collaborating!!

PS interested in more and present in Kuala Lumpur during the GIJC25? Join my workshop! Project Management Best Practices for Leading Investigations – Session – #GIJC25

Template planning

Dit onderdeel staat vermeld in het Handboek voor onderzoeksjournalisten. Voor een vertaling naar het Nederlands kunt rechts van deze tekst via Google Translate de pagina laten vertalen.
Coco Gubbels

Part of the projectplan is the planning. This may be one of the most boring and time killing tasks to do, but it will give you and your team major insights!!

Start with these five fases:
– Preparation
– Research
– Writing
– Editing
– Publication
– Postmortem or evaluation

Per fase you will need to gather all the tasks to be done, by everyone in the team. If you know who is going to be in your team, you can ask them to fill in this template to give input to you as coordinator.

Tip: by letting them fill in the timing and duration they will become true owners of that task in stead of you giving them something to do. They need to think about when they can start and when they will be finished doing the task. It is also a commitment to the team to execute this task as filled in by themselves.

If you have many people in your team, this may become a pretty large file, but you can keep it as simple or as complex as you want or need it to be.

english template

nederlandse template

Tasks in phase 1 (examples):

Kick off meeting: planned
Kick off meeting: agenda shared
Periodic meetings: sending invitation to teammembers
MoU: signed by all teammembers
Folders for documents in place
Communication channels in place

Tasks in phase 2 (examples):

Research in country A
Research in country B
Research in country C
Compare findings
Resume research in country A on topic X
Resume research in country A on topic Y
Resume research in country B on topic Y
Compare findings
Final checks

Tasks in phase 3 (examples):

Writing first part for country A, B and C to share as first publication on date D
Writing / preparing publication for country A (follow up)
Writing / preparing publication for country B (follow up)
Writing / preparing publication for country C (follow up)
Writing / preparing publication or podcast serie
Writing / preparing video including filming
Writing marketing texts and pre-publication texts

Tasks in phase 4 (examples):

Editing video for first publication (including voice overs)
Editing podcast part 1
Editing podcast part 2
Editing tekst first publication
Editing tekst for country A
Editing tekst for country B
Editing tekst for country C

Tasks in phase 5 (examples):

Publication of first article and video
Pre publication (marketing) of podcast
Publication of podcast part 1
Publication of podcast part 2
Publication of tekst for country A (follow up)
Publication of tekst for country B (follow up)
Publication of tekst for country C (follow up)

Tasks in phase 5 (examples):

In the final phase you just need to agree on how and how many times you will get back together for a review and evaluation. It also depends on how publication is planned: with just one big bang or a shared first publication with follow ups per country or topic.

“If you don’t know where you are going. How can you expect to get there?”
Basil S. Walsh

Template Projectplan

Dit onderdeel staat vermeld in het Handboek voor onderzoeksjournalisten. Voor een vertaling naar het Nederlands kunt rechts van deze tekst via Google Translate de pagina laten vertalen.
Coco Gubbels

A good investigative journalism project starts with a good plan. Although many journalists prefer to just start with the investigation, discussing and drawing up a projectplan is the most important part of the collaboration. In putting this plan together, you and the team have to think about what you are going to do, with whom, when and what your result will be. In addition, you also need this data to request an appropriate budget.

Writing down a projectplan makes you as a team think about what you will and will not investigate, what your goal is, how you want to get there and what you need. In addition, you will notice that there may be various interpretations in the team of what constitutes an investigation of a publication.

Assumptions or not properly discussing expectations and interpretations can really hinder an investigation later on and even drive teams apart. There are important points examining communication and interpretations. All the more important to take the time to properly review your research and process with everyone on the team.

Only if you have discussed all these elements with each other and if there are still uncertainties or questions, then you can continue with your research. An additional advantage is that you can use it as a template for the applications you want to make for grants. So you have already done the preparatory work for both the planning and the budget.

The project plan:
• Who’s on the team
• What is the aim of the research
• What is the story/hypothesis
• What has already been published and what are you adding
• How do you go about publishing
• Publication: form, number, planning, where and by whom
• What do you need in terms of software and other resources?

You can download this English version of the project plan template. It may be too elaborate for you small team, but a cross-border team may very well need to fill in every part to cover all agreements within the team. My personal advise is to write down something anyway: have you thought about it, did you agree to skip it and why? Because that may also be an answer.

In the project plan you can refer to the risk management log and the project planning.

Template EN

Template NL

Why you should (or not) add a PM to your investigative project

Why add a PM to your project? Or when not to? That’s the question…

Although most research projects are carried out with a small team of two to four journalists, the number of projects that are inter-regional, international and / or multidisciplinary is growing [The state of collaborative journalism 2020]. More and more subjects are cross-border because they involve international money flows, large data sets are found or specialists are required. But topics in a city also have more impact if they play the same role in other cities. It gives an extra dimension and appeals to a larger audience. Especially when it comes to topics that have a national character, such as public transport or healthcare. In those cases you can grow as a team up to ten, twenty or more people. Who is going to manage that project?

Big boys

Organisations like ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists), OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) and Investigate Europe never started their first project with “Oh, let’s hire a project manager.”. As in business, most organisations, which are not used to setting up large projects, do not turn to a PM to prepare and execute the project professionally. Growing companies start their projects with small teams, in which someone takes the lead in a natural way or takes charge of the implementation and delivery from a self-evident role within the team. As customers become more important and demanding, the project teams grow and so does the added value of a person with a specific role that is solely concerned with managing the project.

Sometimes a company becomes so big and the projects are so numerous that there is an excess of managing people and the role is not so much of added value, but standard and sometimes becomes without content or value. The trick is to keep thinking whether this specific project really needs a coordinating role with this specific team.

When you are confronted with a project that is just a little too big to handle as you are used to, this can prompt you to consider someone with the role of being responsible for things like meetings, action lists, document management etc. It seems logical to choose someone within the team to take on these tasks, but the result may be that the person gets into a conflicting situation: at the same time contributing to the research (and having their own opinion) and being the coordinator of the team. This can lead to situations where either the role of coordinator is compromised or the role of investigative journalist.

To PM or not to PM

Success stories of teams of investigative journalists can certainly be found where someone both contributes to the investigation and takes on the coordinating tasks. This is mainly in small organisations where projects are clear and the team is not too large or complex. However, for larger teams or more complex journalistic projects, a coordinator best be appointed. This is certainly the case when many people from all corners of Europe, for example, work together on a subject.

How to decide whether you want to name someone in the team the coordinator or add a project manager to your team? It is a hard question, since it depends on the complexity and size of your team, skills and capacity of team members. If you decide to let someone within the team of journalists pick up tasks as planning, stakeholder management, alignment with outlets etc does this person have the right skills and experience? Will this role interfere with other roles this person will have within the team? For example, can the coordinator or project manager stand firm if one of the journalists isn’t delivering? Or is this persons opinion going to get in the way of being a neutral party within the team?

If the team is large enough and budgets are put together, figure out how much time you would need to organise and put that next to the investment a team member would have to make, at the expense of research. Then add those hours to the budget request, so you can hire someone for a few hours a week or month to outsource those tasks to someone who can do it efficiently and effectively. This way everyone is maximising her or his capacities!

Tip: if you add the time and costs of a PM you think you need executing your project, funding parties will agree to pay for that part of coordination of the team. It will give assurance that journalists will be focused, the coordination is in good hands and deadlines will be managed. All team members can focus on what they do best.

For more information and some examples:

Elisa Simantke (Investigate Europe) is the editorial coordinator of Investigate Europe. You can watch an interview by Dóra Diseri (n-ost) with her on Facebook 3rd of June 2020 about best practices and case studies of her multinational team. Discussion about the roles and challenges of collaborative journalism amid the coronavirus pandemic and best practices of her cross-border editorial team. Investigate Europe is a team of experienced journalists from nine European countries who are working as a multinational team and tackling the usual national bias by sharing, merging and crosschecking facts.. (Facebook n-ost)

Marina Walker Guevara might be the best known Project Manager in Investigative Journalism. She was the deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, an independent network of reporters who work together on global stories. Walker Guevara has managed some of journalism’s most consequential investigations on global corruption, including the Panama Papers, which involved more than 370 reporters in 76 countries and shook governments and businesses across the world. Other investigations include Swiss Leaks, Luxembourg Leaks and Offshore Leaks. Here is an interview with her about the Panama Papers, a changing world for journalism and her role in this investigation.

“We have realized over the years that the old model, with the lonely wolf, investigative reporting, haunting information andd scoping others is no match to the challenges of the world we have today.”
Marina Walker Guevara

What is a Project Manager doing in Investigative Journalism?

What is a project? And what is a Project Manager doing?

We have to start with another question: What is a project? It looks like kicking in an open door, but it seems appropriate to agree on what a project is and what is not. A project is a set of tasks with a specific budget, timeframe, goal, people, deadline and result. By appointing people who form the team, a deadline and a budget to realize the project, you step outside regular work. It can be a number of hours per week that someone spends on research and publication or full-time. The condition is that the regular work must not hinder the project. That is why you make clear agreements with the team, managers, client and the person who ensures that these agreements are met: the Project Manager (PM).

The PM

The Project Manager is not so much the one who determines what the project is about or how the research should go, but is more of a facilitator who ensures that agreements are kept and that the team receives timely and appropriate support in their work. This is a standard way of working in the business world and is not very different in journalism. Of course, the PM can ask sharp questions, ensure that quality is guaranteed and fact-checking takes place. But this is also part of that facilitating role. Especially when it concerns a cross-border project or when different editorial teams are involved, journalists each have their own editor-in-chief to coordinate the publications.

Managing investigative journalism projects can be more daunting than the reporting, and with increasing amounts of data and even cross-border collaborations, it can make or break the story.
Adiel Kaplan, 26-09-2016

ICIJ received more than 260 gigabytes of useful data across four major databases plus half a million text, PDF, spreadsheet, image and web files. After the initial analysis, a team of 86 investigative journalists from 46 countries worked on one of the largest cross-border investigative partnerships in the history of journalism. This project would never have been possible without collaborative research. But in addition to the extensive team of journalists, programmers and data analysts and project managers also formed the core of this massive project. Without them no Panama Paper reports!

Product Manager

Tanya Pampalone wrote an article for GIJN in 2017 about the role of Product Managers in journalism. She quotes Professor Cindy Royal, who in 2015 already stated that newsrooms are starting to learn that the role of Product Manager is exactly the role newsrooms didn’t know they’d been missing. Of course it is possible to shrug off the role as “tech support”. Stimulating the building of digital products that support journalism involves so much more than just facilitating stories, it is as much journalism as traditional stories, Royal says. Pampalone adds, “As investigative journalists increasingly use complex data, collaboration platforms and interactive technology, the importance of working with a product manager will only increase.”

Royal emphasizes the difference between a product and a project manager: “Sometimes the terms project and product management are used interchangeably. But they are different roles, even if they are handled, in some manner, by the same person. Project management is specifically focused on delivering project functionality – features, scheduling their execution, and making sure a timeline is adhered to. Product management encompasses the broader strategic implications of the entire digital product.”

Royal believes that this role, Product Manager, should be taught in journalism school and not in the tech department. If that’s true (and I think so), why not also add the Project Management role to the journalism school curriculum? If a product manager is crucial in analyzing data, creating platforms and creating apps so that investigative journalism can grow and grow stronger, why not invest in project managers who (together with the product manager) ensure that the best technology is used and journalists can flourish and maximize their talent in an environment fully equipped to support them.

Editors

Since editors have been the first choice to take on managing projects for decades, changing habits can be tricky. But these hard-working editors don’t always have the right skills or experience to perform such assignments properly, Royal explains. It comes down to software development, but with a strong emphasis on content. This does not apply to the role of Project Manager. Editors do not logically have the skills to manage projects, but Project Managers do not have to migle in content per se. may be I need to explain.

“I sometimes think that the words journalism and management said together can be seen as an oxymoron. We manage chaos.”
Walter Robinson, editor-at-large at The Boston Globe, who spoke at the Uncovering Asia 2016 conference in Nepal

Discussion

In Project Managent there is a discussion about whether you should have extensive knowledge in the area where you manage your projects or not. I don’t think it’s necessary, but it certainly helps. The project manager is not so much directive, but facilitates specialists who must inform the PM about what is important and what is not. A PM must be able to manage any project, regardless of the scope. Having said that, I do believe that a PM in journalism should have knowledge of journalistic processes and understand how newspaper and television editors work. It is therefore logical to add this subject to journalistic education and not the other way around.

What should a journalist know about managing projects? And what does the management of newsrooms need to know about project managers? How can an editor be trained to be a good project manager within the editorial team? Lots of tips and tricks are shared online and at conferences, but I think it’s time to professionalize this specific role for each journalism project. Whether it is a large or small project: make use of the available knowledge, experience and skills! Train your people in Project Management to become a professional.

If you are not done reading about this subject yet:

Working (together) online

We are all working from home these days. Want to have some tips and tricks on how to work together online efficiently and produtively?

Since I had a great time talking about our experiences with video calling among colleagues, I decided I’d share some tips and tricks with you. Even though it is, of course, serious business, you need to have a laugh every once in a while… so I put together a bingo card that you can use at the next conference call or webinar.

PMIJ_Webinar and conference call Bingo_june2020 Download

In the second document you will find lot’s of do’s and dont’s about how to preprare your video calls, what mistakes to avoid and how to keep your energy up during the day.

For example, try to mix your day with videocalls, one on one telephonecalls that allow to take a walk outside and some time off the phone or laptop. And put everything on mute.

Another example is to plan short calls with people that are not in you regular meetings to stay informed as you would have been walking down the hall or standing at the coffeemachine. It is important to keep having these informal and in-between-conversations to be informed about things you are now missing out on.

And set up a calendar with your housemates to make sure you have enough time for home, house, kids, animals and or work. Secondly it creates an overview of who needs a quiet corner or room to work without being disturbed.

PMIJ_Working online_june2020 Download

Interested in more tips on project management, investigative journalism or working in teams? Follow my weekly newsletter on Linkedin!