Author: Eleni Stamatoukou

The 13th edition of the Summer School is taking place from August 21 to August 27 in the Greek port city of Thessaloniki. Thirty selected journalists from South East and Central Europe will spend a week mastering their investigative skills and learning from Pulitzer and European Press Prize winners.

During the School, participating journalists will go through the basics of investigative reporting and investigative podcasts with Michael Montgomery, a senior reporter and producer for Reveal; Marija Ristic, award-winning journalist and currently a manager at Amnesty International’s Digital Lab will teach participants how to effectively use OSINT when investigating police attacks; Sam Joiner, who leads the Visual Storytelling Team at Financial Times will explain how his team investigated North Korea’s oil smuggling, also introducing participants to various tools used to track ships; Milica Stojanovic, a BIRN journalist and a digital security trainer, will show participants tips and trick on how to stay safe online while investigating; Olaya Argüeso Perez from Correctiv will speak about data journalism and present some of the Correctiv’s best data-driven stories; the Forbidden Stories team will walk participants through the complex paths of finishing someone else’s investigative work – who could not do it because they either gave their lives for the story or are put behind bars by autocratic leaders; Alison Killing – a Pulitzer Prize winner – will show journalists how to locate notorious camps across China, using innovative online tools and techniques.

Last but not least, and for the first time this year, the School is hosting sessions focused on the mental health of journalists, to be presented by another Pulitzer Prize winner, Mar Cabra.

As every year, BIRN is providing 30 full scholarships for selected participants from the following countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Turkey. This will cover accommodation, meals as well as transportation expenses of up to 200 euros.

Apart from the training, editorial support and mentorship, through our Investigative Initiative Story Fund, BIRN will provide participants with money to support story development and production.

Selected participants will be asked to prepare an investigative story proposal, which they will be working on alone or in a cross-border team during the week. On the last day of the School, a jury composed of BIRN editors will award the best pitches with editorial, financial and publication support.

Limited spots are also available for international participants who need to cover a fee of 800 euros. This includes the training curriculum and full board at the hotel where the Summer School is taking place.

Applications close on June 22, 2023.

Click here to apply!

Wilczek won the 3,000-euro award for her story about the football ultras from Belarus who were inspired by their nationalist counterparts in Ukraine to rise up against their own Moscow-allied government. Her reporting, centred on a group of exiled hooligans, revealed how violent rivalries were cast aside in opposition to the Lukashenko regime. Announcing the award, Fellowship jury member and executive director of the Albanian Media Institute, Remzi Lani, praised “an elegant and complex story about an unknown game, played away – a tale of resistance against the last dictatorship in Europe.”

Czech journalist Anna Koslerova was awarded the second prize for her story about the Czech state’s failure to compensate thousands of Roma women who had been sterilised against their will. The award was given by the jury member and editor for the Swiss daily, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Elena Panagiotidis, who praised the story for showing the enduring suffering of the victims and for “giving them a voice, without being voyeuristic”.

The award for the third prize was shared between two journalists: Alexia Kalaitzi from Greece and Matea Grgurinovic from Croatia.

Kalaitzi’s story examined the impact of the war in Ukraine on a decarbonisation drive in Greece’s coal-mining heartland. Jury member Kristof Bender, deputy chairman of the European Stability Initiative, praised the story for taking the reader to “the people and places directly affected by this major economic and social transition” – uncovering a struggle that was “not only very relevant for Greece, but also for all of Europe and, actually, the planet as a whole.”

Grgurinovic’s story examined the failure to re-house the victims of an earthquake in Croatia’s long-neglected interior. Presenting the award, jury member and BIRN editor Gyula Csak said the story showed a depth of human suffering that cannot be revealed by numbers alone. By spending time with her subjects, Grgurinovic had revealed the impact “not just of the earthquake” but of the devastation wrought by war and by official policy after independence.

The ceremony celebrated the successful completion of the 2021 edition of the programme. The stories from the programme were published throughout 2022 under the topic, Transformation.

In addition to the awarded journalists, the 2021 fellows were Mateusz Mazzini (Poland); Eva Kubaniova (Czech Republic); Vojtech Berger (Czech Republic); Mateusz Kowalik (Poland).

Alongside Remzi Lani, Elena Panagiotidis, Kristof Bender and Gyula Csak, the jury was comprised of Milorad Ivanovic, representative of the FJE alumni network; Florian Hassel, Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung; and Adelheid Wolfl, correspondent for Austrian daily Der Standard.

With the conclusion of this year’s programme, the 10 fellows join the FJE alumni network, which consists of more than 150 journalists from 14 CEE countries, who promote the highest professional standards.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence was launched in 2007 to promote high-quality, cross-border reporting. The programme provides fellows with financial and editorial support, allowing them to travel, report and write their stories and develop their journalistic skills. In 2020, the fellowship programme expanded to include journalists from the Visegrad Four countries of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

The Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence is implemented by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and supported by ERSTE Foundation.

A three-day training workshop was held in Batumi, Georgia from May 25-29, bringing together around 20 journalists and editors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Georgia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The workshop is part of the project ‘Spheres of Influence Uncovered’, jointly implemented by BIRN, German NGO n-ost, Uzbek media outlet Anhor and Georgia’s JAMNews.

Over the three days, the participants learned more about the importance of cross-border reporting in the context of the topics the project is covering. They were also guided through successful cross-border stories published by BIRN, JAMNews and Anhor and given tips and advice on how to approach potential cross-border topics.

They also were given advice about where to look for data, how to obtain official data when public institutions are reluctant to release it, how to interview experts and what to expect from them, how to read complicated records and who to ask for help with them.

The participants were asked to list potential problems and issues they might come across while investigating and writing about political and economic players in their regions.

Split into cross-border teams, the journalists worked on specific stories with editors from all three regions. The first cross-border and cross-regional stories are to be published by the end of the year.

The project ‘Spheres of Influence Uncovered’ aims to contribute to a better understanding of the roles that three key international players – the EU, Russia and China – have on the seven project countries’ economies.

During the project, the participating journalists will map the economic activities of these three players and identify the main challenges and consequences for their countries. This project is partly a follow-up to BIRN’s previous work in the sphere of foreign economic activities, explored in its interactive map of China’s activities in the Balkans.

The documentary ‘Forgotten Victims’ (‘Zaboravljene Žrtve’), which tells the stories of four families who lost someone in the wars in Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia during the 1990s or were direct victims themselves, was screened by Euronews Serbia on Saturday and Sunday.

The film showcases the continuing failure of the systems in the three countries to address the needs of civilian victims of war, more than two decades after the conflicts ended.

It follows Bekim Gashi and Slavica Popovic from Kosovo and Andronika Jovanovska and Skender Zimberi from North Macedonia in their decade-long struggles to learn who killed their loved ones, win compensation from the state and get some kind of acknowledgment for their suffering.

In the film, they explain how they feel abandoned and betrayed by all the key players – including their own states and the international community.

While some, like Gashi, are at the end of a lengthy reparation process, most will probably never get any compensation. In most Balkan countries, material reparations are possible via civil lawsuits after a final, guilty verdict is reached in court. With the slow pace of war crime trials and legal challenges, those who received compensation are a minority.

The film also tackles the ongoing trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters and the issues some Serbian war victims are having with the international lawyers assigned to them by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague.

The film was financed by the European Union and includes interviews with victims’ associations, legal experts, civil society activists, lawyers and government representatives.

Kushtrim Koliqi, executive director at the Pristina-based NGO Integra, which was part of the project, told BIRN that the purpose of the film is “to assist in the recognition of past injustices, their memorialisation and reparation, but also testify about the social challenges of transition.”

The documentary is also intended to “open up discussion and offer a new perspective on the life of different war victims after their losses, hence opening up spaces for new ways of dealing with the past”, Koliqi added.

The Albanian and Macedonian versions of the same film have already been screened in Kosovo and North Macedonia. All three versions of the film, as well as one with English subtitles, are soon to be published on the BIRN Network’s YouTube channel.

The film ‘Forgotten Victims’ was produced as part of the Strengthening Inclusive Victims’ Voices: Transforming Narratives project and financed by the European Union. Apart from BIRN, the other partners in the project are Integra, New Social Initiative, Civic Initiatives, PAX and the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ).