What I’ve been up to recently

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.

Interest in cross border journalism sends me on the road

Speaking about cross border journalism at universities and conferences this autumn brings a lot of travelling. And very interesting discussions. Can a journalistic, methodological approach developed to solve professional challenges contribute also to the scholarly debate? This may be a question for the spring. For now it’s lecturing:

Copenhagen University’s course on Film and Media. Freie Universität Berlin. The International Reporting Course at the Journalism School Thomas More in Mechelen in Belgium.

Also at journalism conferences the method of cross border journalism is presented at in-job-training level, for example at the upcoming Balkan Investigative Network Fellowship meeting in Belgrade.

So in the past ten years we’ve seen the mainstreaming of data journalism in media as well as journalism education and training. Wouldn’t it be great to see the mainstreaming of cross border journalism in the coming years!

Handbook on cross border journalism

These weeks I’m working over the manuscript for the Danish version of my Handbook on Cross Border Journalism to be published at Forlaget Ajour, specialised in books about Journalism and connected to the Danish School of Journalism.

The target group for the book are journalists and students of journalism. For a more scholarly audience I summarize the method in an article for Journal on Applied Journalism and Media Studies. The aim with this article is not only to present the journalistic methodology of cross border journalism, but also to invite for an interdisciplinary approach to developing it further.

Both article and book are planned for publication this autumn.

Off to Brussels for the Dataharvest conference

The Dataharvest+ Conference in Brussels is ready for more than 200 journalists and programmers from the 8th to the 11th of May. Growing again this year!

This is a working conference, where coders and journalists make fresh data available (this year EU-tenders, Farmsubsidy data, European Parliament data and a brand new data catalogue from the EU agencies) – and then cooperate on preparing journalistic stories – not least cross border stories.  We speak about upcoming EU-subjects with the EU-ombudslady Emily O’Reilly and the network of EU-agencies aswell as the officials behind the TED database will be in dialogue with journalists.

The Dataharvest also is an integrated part of my “EU journalism for pioneers” class at Nordic Journalism Centre.

 

 

We win the Leipzig Prize for the Freedom and future of the Media

Working on something as abstract as a European public sphere usually gives people a slightly sleepy expression around the eyes. But hey – now we got an award for doing exactly that!

We – Ides Debruyne and I – win the Leipzig Prize for the Freedom and future of the Media for having founded Journalismfund.eu. Journalismfund gives research grants to journalists, who have a story idea and with to do research to follow the story across national borders. Journalismfund then – after a competitive call – can help with the additional costs for travelling, translating and taking time to do good research.

The Media Foundation Leipzig has given this award to impressing journalists and journalist organisations. Previous laureates are Sey Hersh, Anna Politkovskaya, Hans-Martin Tillack, Roberto Saviano, Fabrizio Gatti and Netzwerk Recherche, the German association for investigative journalism. Now we are mentioned alongside these fabulous people.

This year we are laureates alongside Indian Tongam Rina and German Jörg Armbruster and Martin Durm.

Though Ides and I get the award, our thanks go to a lot of other people too. Cross-border reporting in its character is based upon cooperation with others.

Here we have to say thank you to the family of Pascal Decroos and the board of the Journalismfund/Pascal Decroos Foundation, who supported the idea for Journalismfund.eu since 2008.

And we say thank you to Journalismfund.eu’s advisory board with representatives from the investigative journalism communities around Europe and our peer review jury. And we say thank you to all the journalists, who are ready  to do their bright and brave work.

Right now Ides and I enjoy this honour intensely and are grateful to the Leipzig Media Foundation for this encouragement. And the next step we will do our best to further develop the idea of cross-border reporting and support to all the great journalists, who with their comitment and courage are developing quality journalism in Europe these years.

Reactions – Germany and Belgium – Europe

Suggestion: Crossborder reporting for future EU journalism

I was invited to speak at the annual media fair Medienforum in Köln in Germany on June 7th 2013 – on the future of EU journalism: Wege aus der Öffentlichkeitskrise: Europa und die Medien. The moderator noted that there was no question mark at the end of the headline of the debate – so we had to offer solutions!

Suggested crossborder reporting as carried out by ICIJ in the Offshore Leaks stories and as supported by Journalismfund.eu and others and presented at places like the Dataharvest Conference or the Global Investigative Journalism Conference.

Crossborder reporting? Nobody knew. Steueroasen? Of course! In other words, our method is gaining ground. And yes, I do believe that quality journalism is a way out of the crisis. The EU appears to be growing up, now journalism about it has to grow up too. And is well on the way, if I look at all the important stories carried out by Journalismfund.eu grantees.

Other speakers on the panel were Georgios Pappas, a Greek correspondent in Berlin, Mayte Peters, chairperson at Publixphere, Jörg  Schönenborn, editor-in-chief, WDR, Cologn, Rainer Wieland, vice-president European Parliament, moderated by Knut Pries, Brussels correspondent at Funke Media Group.

Next Dataharvest planned for May 2014

The 2013 Dataharvest Conference for investigative and datajournalism in Europe this year had 156 journalists and programmers from all over Europe participating. Catch up with who was there on the 2013 programme.

If you missed it, read the wrap up and find presentations here.

If you want to stay in touch and keep colleagues posted about your work, join the FB Dataharvest group – that’s the meeting place for the time being.

#DataHarvest14 scheduled for May 9-10 2014 in Brussels. Stay in touch via the FB group or the Journalismfund.eu mailinglist for precise date, program, etc.

And thanks once again to everyone all who participated and contributed!

#Dataharvest13 upcoming! Join us

Journos:

Want to meet the director of the European Ombudsman (half of the cases there concern transparency) – and want to meet two lawyers, who are among those who win cases for more transparency at the European Court of Justice?

Then come to Brussels to the Dataharvest.

Of course you can also meet investigative journalisms grand old in Europe, David Leigh, investigative editor at the Guardian. He recently got an –  indirect – award for his work: The OECD experts praised his and his colleagues’ work in their big report about tax evasion Adressing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (page 13).

And then there will be lots of fresh data and good coders to help you make stories out of them. For example the award winning journalist Nils Mulvad @nmulvad (European journalist of the year 2006) will help with fresh Farmsubsidy data, and Friedrich Lindenberg from the Open Knowledge Foundation/Der Spiegel @pudo.

Interested in research in social media? Meet Paul Myers, researcher at the BBC and excellent speaker and trainer @researchclinik. Interested in combining a lot of new research methods? Meet Paul Bradshaw from Birmingham University @paulbradshaw. Meet Per Anders Johansen from Norway, who makes a living on wobbing for excellent stories.

And many, many others! Have a look at the program (as of today – to be updated further).

There will be four tracks:

• Farmsubsidy – EU spending on agricultural policy @farmsubsidy
• Crossborder – reporting following the story, not the national borders
• Wobbing – using freedom of information legislation to get good, original information for journalistic work  @wobbing_europe
• Data – cooperating with coders to make better journalism

Much looking forward to seeing you there!

The next generation

I have the honour of passing on our craft to the next generation of journalists as a teacher at Roskilde University.

The Department of Journalism and the Centre for News Research are part of CBIT, the Institute for Communication, Business and Information Technology.

Follow our day-to-day work on Twitter @RUCjournalistik.

Good news today – just to mention an example: All students of RUC have gotten a training-job, which is an integrated part of their studies. However every year there is a panic to get one of the coveted traing-jobs. Congrats!

Money for journalistic research

Journalismfund.eu supports teams of journalists who follow a story across borders. Journalismfund.eu now has its 6th call for application open.

Traffickers from the Ukraine, slave labour from Romania, working in the Czech Republic for a Dutch company? Obvious for journalists to build a team to get the right competences and languages! Or one piece of EU law governing the conditions for citizens in all EU and EEA countries? Again an obvious method to pool research competence and time in a team and then to publish for the various target groups. Or a company acting – possibly in breach of EU law – in several European countries?

This kind of ideas is supported by Journalismfund.eu. If you have an obvious idea, have a good team almost ready to start researching, if just you had this bit of extra money and time – do have a look at the latest call for applications and see, whether the rules for applications and the criteria fit your project.