Around 4,300 cases a week are heard in the family courts in England and Wales and the number of applications for children to be taken into council care has is around 13,000 each year. And yet remarkably little is known by most people about what goes on in family courts. In this latest episode, our guest is Louise Tickle, a multi-award winning freelance journalist who has reported extensively on domestic abuse, child protection and the family courts - and how the lack of scrutiny and transparency in these courts means many women and families are being tragically failed by the justice system. Last year, Louise’s investigations for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme exposed cases of families traumatised by their encounters with family courts and judges hiding poor decisions behind secrecy rules. Earlier this year, Louise’s reporting for BBC Panorama shared the troubling stories of families who felt failed by local authorities and social workers when their children were taken into care. And her recent podcasts for Tortoise Media have exposed how a former government minister abused the secrecy of the family courts in an attempt to hide the truth that he had abused and raped his wife. In our conversation, Louise explains how she developed a journalistic interest in these areas, the pros and cons of conducting her investigations as a freelance, how she’s grown in confidence in challenging reporting restrictions and why she believes journalists have a unique and critical role in holding courts to account. J-Lab is a podcast by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University.

New laws banning independent coverage of the invasion of Ukraine have forced many news outlets to leave Russia. Meduza claims to be Russia’s biggest independent media outlet even though its editors have been based, in exile, in neighbouring Latvia for most of the last 10 years. In recent years Meduza’s reporting has ranged from exposing the presence of Russian mercenaries in Venezuela to uncovering the machinations of the Kremin’s propaganda apparatus. Now it finds itself reporting the war in Ukraine, but just last week it had to evacuate more than 20 of its reporters from Russia In this episode, we speak with Meduza editor-in-chief and co-founder Ivan Kolpakov who explains what life has been like for Russian journalists under Vladimir Putin, a leader who uses the power of TV to spread propaganda and convince the Russian people of his narrative. Ivan describes how it's possible to operate in exile, and why he believes it will take a long time for independent journalism to help Russian people see through the disinformation and lies. To support the work of Meduza, visit https://save.meduza.io/eu

Our guest this time is Joshi Herrmann, who began the pandemic intending to write a book in the Czech Republic… but instead launched a venture in Manchester that shows there might after all be a viable future for good quality, local news reporting. In just 18 months, Joshi Herrmann has signed up 16,000 free subscribers (and more than 1,000 paid) to The Mill, his weekly email newsletter. And thanks to funding from Substack, he has launched two more titles: The Tribune in Sheffield and The Post in Liverpool. In this episode, you'll hear Joshi explain the business model behind The Mill, describe how its journalism differs from traditional local newspaper reporting, and unpick why he made the switch from working as a national and international journalist. J-Lab is a podcast brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University.

In this episode, our guest is a journalist who has had three features shortlisted for this year’s British Journalism Awards – in one, she meets women who clear landmines in Lebanon, in another she talks to female footballers tackling France’s on-pitch hijab ban, while in the third she reports on the conditions endured by asylum seekers in the controversial Napier Barracks. With this kind of portfolio, you might expect Jessie Williams to be an experienced, veteran hack – but she is actually a young, freelance foreign reporter in the early stages of her career. Her features have been published in The Observer Magazine, Foreign Policy, The Economist, The Independent, Al Jazeera, The Telegraph, VICE World News, openDemocracy, the Financial Times, Huck Magazine, Middle East Eye, Dazed, The Guardian, BBC Travel, Shado Magazine, Novara Media, Refinery29, The i Newspaper, BRICKS Magazine and The Hackney Gazette. In our conversation, Jessie explains how she got her break in journalism, the kind of stories she likes to report, the importance of working collaboratively on story ideas, the challenge of getting features commissioned and her advice to anyone embarking on their journey as a freelance journalist. J-Lab is a podcast brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University. The intro music and sound effects are taken from Into The Fire, a short documentary by National Geographic about the all-female team of Yazidi deminers.

Eliot Higgins is founder of online investigative collective Bellingcat which, over the last 10 years, has used open source investigation techniques to prove that Syria’s regime used chemical weapons against its citizens, find evidence of Russian involvement in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, and unmask the “kill teams” who poisoned Russian defector Sergei Skripal and opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In this episode, Eliot describes how he taught himself open source methods, outlines what makes Bellingcat different to conventional investigative teams and offers advice to early-career journalists. He also explains why Chinese-speaking open source investigators are highly prized... and why he doesn't order room service or leave his underpants unattended. J-Lab is a podcast brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University.

If you've seen Oscar-winning documentary Icarus, you’ll no doubt have been astounded by the scale of the state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes. And in this episode of J-Lab – a podcast brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University – our guest is Nick Harris, one of the two Mail on Sunday investigative journalists who exposed Grigory Radchenkov, head of the Moscow lab who was at the heart of the scheme. But in the last few years, Nick has been reporting stories that show how widespread doping and medicalisation is across many sports in many countries. Just recently he and colleagues revealed how UK Sport used more than 90 Olympic athletes as guinea pigs for an experimental ketones substance ahead of the London games in 2012. In this conversation, Nick explains the background to his reporting and offers his tips and advice to anyone interested in investigative work.

Annabel Deas, an investigative journalist who works for BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio 4, has just won the Orwell Prize for Hope High, a seven-part podcast documenting the year she spent with a community in Huddersfield where a number of children were being exploited by county lines drug dealers. Judges described Hope High as “British public service journalism, impartial and hard hitting, at its best.” In this episode, Annabel explains the background to her reporting, how she won a community’s trust and offers her advice to young or emerging journalists who want to do this kind of investigative work. This podcast is brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University.

The appetite for showbiz and celebrity news has only increased during the last 12 months and our guest for this episode is Katie Hind, showbiz editor at the Mail on Sunday newspaper. In the last year alone, Katie has broken stories that forced Victoria Beckham to withdraw her application for government furlough money; that blew the whistle on James Norton and other celebrities for posting photos of their Audi cars on Instagram without telling followers they were freebies; and that revealed Rolling Stone Mick Jagger had sex with the actor Rae Dawn when she was just 15. In this episode, Katie explains how the role of the showbiz differs from other reporting roles, but also why she believes celebrity stories are a very important part of the newsroom mix. She discusses too the toxic trolling and abuse that she and many other female journalists are having to endure on social media. This podcast is brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University.

George Arbuthnott and Jonathan Calvert of the Sunday Times Insight team have published the first major book telling the inside story of Britain's battle with coronavirus and exposing failures at the top of government which may have cost thousands of lives. In this episode, George explains the reporting behind the story and discusses the methods used by Insight – perhaps the most successful and certainly the best known investigations team in British newspapers. Insight's long string of successes stretches back to uncovering the Profumo affair, the thalidomide scandal, the discovery of Israel's secret nuclear weapons and more recently the Fifa cash-for-votes corruption. And since joining the Sunday Times, George has exposed a global doping scandal in athletics, human trafficking in the UK and war crimes in Afghanistan by members of the SAS. This podcast is brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University.

Our guest for this episode of the J-Lab podcast is Christina Lamb, award-winning chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times. Christina has spent more than 30 years covering wars and conflicts around the world. She has written nine books, including one with Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban in northern Pakistan because of her campaign for girls to go to school. Most recently, Christina has written a devastating account of rape in modern conflict, and her book, Our Bodies, Their Battlefield was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. In this episode, we discuss why it’s been so difficult to convince male editors to publish stories about the atrocities committed against women in wars and conflicts. Christina offers advice on how to interview deeply traumatized people and shares her fears that our interest in foreign affairs has diminished in recent years. She also explains how she got her big break as a foreign correspondent and whether she is happier writing books or reporting for newspapers. This podcast is brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University.