April 2023: The Climate Arena Conference was held for the first time in dear old Prague. 55 journalists from across Europe joined forces for the prototype version of a Dataharvest style working conference – now focusing on climate related topics and bringing scientists and civic techies into the crowd too. See the programme here. Next full conference with about 200 participants will be held in November. City yet to be determined. Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to the Arena newsletter to find out when and where.
March/April 2023: European Collaborative Journalism Project by the Töpfer Foundation supported by Arena had its 4-day kick-off retreat in Siggen by the Baltic Sea. This is a very focused matchmaking seminar where carefully selected journalists join the seminar, embarque on a matchmaking process and end up with a project plan. Previous years cohorts lead to – among others – the Forever Pollution Project or the Money to Burn Project.
February 2023: Massive contamination with the health threatening “forever chemicals” PFAS unveiled today: The Forever Pollution Project publishes its findings across Europe. This investigation was developed for more than a year in a massive cross-border journalism effort. Arena for Journalism in Europe in the autumn of 2022 stepped in to help scale the team from five to 13 countries. Proud and humbled to have been part of this amazing team. Data and data gathering methodology are public, including the methodology of the crossborder collaboration.
November 2022: Retreat with some top-level Danish colleagues from the Cavling Committe, the jury behind the finest Danish journalism award. More than 40 submissions, brilliant examples of Danish journalism in the past year. Material is so good, it’s a painful process to select only a handful nominees – lengthy discussions: tough, interesting, professionally rewarding. Award will be handed out in January 2023.
October 2022: Four days with 72 students in Brussels, they shaped 9 teams to do crossborder investigations over the coming months as part of their journalism education. A major step in crossborder collaborative journalism: This way of working has now come so far that we can develop journalism educations for the next generation. First cohort of crossborder journalism students get a chance to collaborate in a network of three journalism educations from France, Sweden and Germany.