FT creates visual investigations team, hires Killing

The Financial Times has appointed Alison Killing as a senior visual investigations reporter, leading a newly created visual investigations team.

Reporting to visual stories editor Sam Joiner, the new unit combines investigative and visual storytelling skills and will focus on delivering agenda-setting public interest journalism. The FT’s visual storytelling team has been recognised with industry awards for its coverage of the war in Ukraine, illicit oil smuggling into North Korea and launch of the The Climate Game.

Killing is a licensed architect and investigative journalist who uses large datasets, open sources and spatial and visual techniques. In 2021 she was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for an investigation that uncovered a secret network of detention camps in Xinjiang, China.

FT editor Roula Khalaf said: “Alison has an outstanding track record reporting on stories of critical importance, and this team under Sam Joiner will bring new capabilities to the FT that will deliver more high-impact investigative visual journalism.”

Killing recently produced a series of films for the 2023 Venice Biennale based on the reporting process for the Xinjiang investigation. A TED Senior Fellow, she has also written a guide for open source investigations in China for Bellingcat.

The new team will include graphics journalist Peter Andringa, who has previously worked at the Washington Post and the Guardian, and designer Chris Campbell, who worked as an infographics analyst at the International Criminal Court prior to joining the FT in 2011.