As the Panama Papers continue to embarrass leaders across continents, one thought has kept occurring to me: How the hell did the organizers pull it off? I mean, how did they corral hundreds of reporters? How did they make sense of so many documents? And, most importantly, how did they stay sane during it all?
So I spoke with Marina Walker Guevara, who helped shepherd the project. Walker is deputy director of the International of the Consortium of Investigative Journalism, which has a long history of collaborating with many, many far-flung partners. In early 2015, Walker and ICIJ were finishing up work on another big leak. “We’re never going to do this again,” Marina recalled thinking. “It’s great. But we’re exhausted and we need a vacation.”
