A Look into the Pandora Papers
While his official title is “online editor,” Hamish Boland-Rudder, prefers “storyteller.” The stories
that he and his global network of colleagues have told include several groundbreaking
investigations, including the Panama Papers, the Implant Files, and the Pandora Papers.
Since 2014, Rudder has worked for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a
group of journalists who collaborate on stories about the world’s wealthiest and most powerful.
One of his major projects, the Pandora Papers revealed the financial secrets of prime ministers
and mobsters, sparking major action by governments.
Born and raised in Sydney, Rudder started working as a journalist at the Canberra Times.
Shortly after, he moved to the ICIJ and briefly worked out of Washington D.C. for a while before
returning to Sydney to be with his wife and children in 2017.
Your job title is online editor. What does that mean?
My job title is terrible. I’ve had the same job title for nine years now and it means nothing. But
my job is to help get reporter's stories ready for audiences. And make sure they're easy to
understand, digestible, and shareable for audiences. The work is so broad, I don’t know if
there’s any one job title.
Your investigations can take years. Is there a template you follow?
With those investigations based on big leaks, our first step is to assess and process the data
that comes in. Once we start finding patterns, we start to think about what stories are there to
tell from this information and how do we tell them? That's when we can start to bring in bigger
teams of journalists. For example, if we’re seeing strong stories in Latin America, then we’ll
approach the journalists we know in Latin America to join the collaboration. After that initial
assessment period and building the collaboration– its standard investigative reporting.
What has been your most successful technique for attracting audiences to ICIJ’s investigative work?
Probably Reddit, of all places. One of the things that I like about it is the direct engagement. I
think for some of our reporters, being able to have those conversations with an interested and
engaged audience has helped them better understand how people consume their news.
What’s it like working with reporters around the globe?
One of my favorite ICIJ stories goes back to the Panama Papers in 2016. We were working with
an Icelandic reporter. The Prime Minister of Iceland had hidden his interest in an offshore
company at a time when Iceland was still reeling from the collapse of its economy. There’s this lone Icelandic reporter, unable to engage with anyone around him because he was so focused
on getting this investigation right. He literally taped up his windows so that his neighbors
wouldn't look in and see the research he was doing. His family thought that he was becoming
depressed and were starting to get really worried about his health. But the whole time he was
engaging online with us. And he tells a sweet story about how, in the darkest moments, when
he hadn’t spoken to anyone apart from his wife, when he wasn't sure if there was a story, he
drew courage from the reporters around him, helping him find new leads, new ways into the
story, and sharing what they’re all working on too.
Edited for space and clarity.
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