October 2020: 37 students from 21 countries – more than ever before – have joined the Master Investigative Journalism at the University of Gothenburg for a year of work on investigative, data and cross-border journalism. I have the pleasure of being on the teacher’s team and what a great crowd of students! We use cross-border collaboration competences proactively in times of hybrid-teaching with about 3/4 of the class on campus and 1/4 online, so they train project coordination and remote team work as they study (and as we all through the corona-time). In this article by Journalism Institute, we’re doing a first status.
September 2020: 1st of September, we started the Dataharvest Digital and participation is extremely encouraging! The coronavirus prevented us from the annual in-person gathering over 3½ days in Mechelen in May. Instead, we chose to spread the 120+ sessions over three months to avoid parallel sessions. A weekly focus on a topic or a research method makes it easier to navigate the programme. Our first rough stats confirm that this works well: the average of participants per session is significantly higher online (with no parallel sessions) than in Mechelen (with competing sessions in the same time slots). Also, the geographic spread of our participants is much wider, which we’re very happy about: We need all of Europe! At the end of September, we have 447 registered participants, close to the target of 450 we set for the entire online experiment. The other day, we even managed to laugh together online – a challenge highlighted by many journalism trainers teaching online this year! Further, we see local initiatives to gather the Dataharvest Community on local level (Berlin in late September, Amsterdam in early October) – and this is the essence of cross-border collaborative journalism: Being well-rooted at home but thinking across borders! Many lessons learnt to supplement the in-person conferences in the future.
August 2020: Preparing for 13 weeks of online gatherings at Dataharvest Digital. This gives interesting opportunities for digital meeting formats – endlessly curious how it will go! Also preparing for a new group of students from all over the world starting at the Master for Investigative Journalism at Gothenburg University.
June 2020: Dataharvest – the European Investigative Journalism Conference goes fully digital for 2020 due to the health situation. Instead of blocking people’s weekends in front of a screen, we spread our sessions over three months from September to November.
May 2020: A fresh review of my book on cross-border collaborative journalism has been published by Swedish scholar Urban Larssen from Södertörn/Sweden at Nordicom Review. He categorises the book among those working on the future of “journalistic authority” by “rethinking journalism beyond the regular newsroom and beyond national and disciplinary borders”. That’s very precise and very encouraging. Nothing against the “regular newsroom” – on the contrary! But we need to think freely and very precisely about how we work with knowledge sharing and critical thinking in our societies in order to strengthen journalism in this era of liquid media.
April 2020: First online-teaching in times of corona: My usual spring-class with the international journalism course at the Thomas More in Mechelen/Belgium. I keep believing in real life as the best way of teaching and working – but we are journalists and we’ll do our best to surmount difficulties.
February 2020: German Alfred-Töpfer-Foundation in its new European Journalism Programme offered a four day seminar for cross-border journalism in a seminar centre near the Baltic Sea. 15 junior and mid-career journalists from all over Europe gathered, because they want to collaborate across borders. And they do that already – I know, because I’m in their shared chat group. They’ll all meet again for Dataharvest – the European Investigative Journalism Conference in May in Mechelen.
February 2020: Gothenburg University is one of the renowned journalism schools in Sweden and offers a one-year Master in investigative, data and cross-border journalism. Had the pleasure to introduce the class in a three day course to cross-border collaborative journalism.
February 2020: Greek Incubator for Media and Development, iMEdD in Athens, celebrated its one-year birthday with a 24 hour mini-conference and party. It was a pleasure to be there for several full-house 1-hour workshops on fundraising for journalism and journalism projects – and for the party, of course!
November 2019: Three days at my old journalism school DMJX in Århus/Denmark! Two days teaching and working with an international class on cross-border collaborative journalism, followed by a presentation during a mini-festival for all students. Pleasure to work with committed students!
October 2019: Key-note at the European Journalism Training Association conference bringing together journalism teachers and lecturers from Europe and Africa at the Brost Institute in Dortmund. Encouraging meetings and talks, and encouraging to know that cross-border collaborative journalism now is on the way to journalism education – and even across continental borders!
October 2019: Brainstorm gathering at German Bosch Foundation called by Richard Weizsäcker Fellow Natalie Nougayrède: Allowing ourselves free thoughts on journalism and media in Europe.
October 2019: Data SKUP conference in Norway, speaking about European data and documents, and handing over the Data SKUP award as part of the jury. Small country, yet scores of impressive and inspiring work: Data journalism seamlessly integrated into the research and publication process.
September 2019: Amazing, critical, inspiring work done to surmount bias! Unbias the News by Hostwriter and Correctiv, edited by Tina Lee from Hostwriter. I read from my chapter in the book and enjoyed thought-provoking presentations and discusstions. Read – for example – the presentation of the GIJN South Africa contact person, Tanya Pampalone, on how the use of English as our lingua franca and working language influences our journalism. And see pictures from the book launch on an old fishing vessel in the harbour of Hambourg.
September 2019: Presenting our paper on cross-border collaborative journalism education in Europe at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2019 in Hamburg along with Jenny Wiik from Gothenburg University, our 3rd co-author, Mark Deuze from University of Amsterdam could not be there this time.
September 2019: Input speaker on innovative journalism in Europe at M100 Sanssouci Potsdam. Inspiring and pleasant meetings in the charming Potsdam autumn parks.
August 2019: Regaining the Power of Publication With Collaborative Journalism. ICIJ, the crossborder journalism network I’ve been a member of since 2009, published a Q&A about my book on crossborder collaborative journalism.
July 2019: Lively interest in crossborder collaborative journalism at the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Summer Conference in London. Crowded rooms for a session on crossborder method (carefully reported by Journalism.co.uk), two panels with projects by Investigate Europe, ICIJ, Investico and in the evening a launch party for my book.
May 2019: The European Investigative Journalism Conference (Dataharvest) held in the charming Flemish town Mechelen in close cooperation with the Thomas More journalism school there. Almost 400 participants from all over Europe. 1 day of master classes and the Dataharvest hack day. 3½ days of hands-on training, sharing, networking, discussing – and countless meetings with precious colleagues in this inspiring journalism community.
