I've been browsing Bellingcat after an article from it was posted here a little bit ago. Did some googling about the site and came across this article and found it interesting. They are a civilian journalist site using mostly open source intelligence.
There's a lack of accountability that tends to liberate citizen activists and journalists, too. The stakes for Bellingcat to be wrong about something are pretty low - nobody's calling in an airstrike for OSI some bloggers dug up.