More than 50 journalists and editors from across the Western Balkans and Visegrad countries participated in a four-day online training from July 21-24 focused on audience-engaged journalism.
The training was organised as part of the projects Media Innovation Europe and Paper Trail for Better Governance, supporting grantees from calls for Audience-Engaged Journalism Grants.
The interactive sessions were led by a combination of international and regional trainers and provided grantees with tools to deepen audience engagement through crowdsourced journalism, storytelling and community-focused investigations.
The training kicked off with an introduction to engagement journalism by Asia Fields, an engagement reporter at ProPublica. She walked participants through core concepts of crowdsourcing, identifying community needs, and building trust with underrepresented groups. Fields shared her experience in reporting on neglected school infrastructure and homelessness in the US, sparking a discussion among the participants about how to apply similar methods in their own contexts.
“ProPublica engagement reporters crowdsource evidence, anecdotes and input at scale to fuel important accountability-focused journalism,” Fields explained.
Recognising the linguistic diversity of the participants, the training featured multiple parallel sessions conducted in different languages.
Regional trainers Besar Likmeta (BIRN Albania), Katarina Zrinjski (BIRN BiH), Gyula Csak (BIRN) and Milica Stojanović (Balkan Insight) led targeted workshops on callout design, crowdsourcing techniques and community engagement strategies, culminating in a session on use of the specialised audience-engaged journalism tool facilitated by Karla Juničić, ECR tool coordinator.
Participants practiced developing engagement callouts tailored to their audiences, conducted case study analysis and learned how to incorporate community feedback into editorial planning.
The final days of the training focused on practical application – guiding participants on turning audience input into impactful investigative stories. Journalists worked in language-specific groups to develop plans for future stories using real data and community responses.
They also explored how to analyse callout responses, assess editorial potential, and structure community-driven narratives.
The four-day programme was part of the broader Audience-Engaged Journalism Grants scheme of the Media Innovation Europe and Paper Trail for Better Governance projects, which are designed to foster more inclusive, community-oriented journalism across Europe. The grantees will continue to receive mentorship as they implement their projects in the months ahead.
Media Innovation Europe: Independence Through Sustainability, co-financed by the EU Commission, is led by a consortium of media support organisations working to bolster the resilience, innovation and audience reach of independent media in Central and Southeastern Europe. Among them are the International Press Institute, The Fix Foundation and Thompson Foundation.
The Paper Trail for Better Governance initiative, led by BIRN and funded by the Austrian Development Agency, supports media freedom, transparency and accountability across the Western Balkans. Through investigative journalism and audience-engagement practices, the project empowers local media and communities to spotlight corruption and advocate for stronger democratic institutions.