Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
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As part of efforts to widen the regional scope of its project
activities, BIRN organised two-day workshop on October 4 and 5.
A group of ten Albanian reporters attended the workshop which served as an introduction to BIRN house style and its weekly newsletter Balkan Insight.
Regional Network Director Gordana Igric gave a presentation on international journalism standards, article structure, news analysis and libel laws.
The training session concluded with a discussion of ideas for Balkan Insight articles. Stories dealing with under-reported issues in Albania were commissioned. These will be published in a special issue at the beginning of November.
During her stay in Tirana, Igric also met the editors and management of local media, including Gazeta Shqiptare, Panorama, Korieri and the Albanian Telegraph Agency. They expressed an interest in republishing Balkan Insight articles.
Albena Shkodrova, Director of BIRN Bulgaria, will hold a workshop on
analytical journalism on September 20-21 in Sofia. It will be part of a
long-term course for Roma journalists-in-training organized by the
Access Foundation.
This project focuses on young members of the Roma community and prepares them for careers in journalism. It aims thereby to redress the negative representation of the Roma minority in the Bulgarian media by integrating Roma journalists in media outlets.
The training consists of four months of theoretical lectures, workshops and seminars followed by a six months of practical work in which trainees apply their new skills in a professional setting.
The theoretical part involves training in basic journalism skills, grammar, style, politics, law, economic, social, and judicial reporting, media management, human rights, interethnic relations, computer-assisted reporting and English.
In the workshop, Shkodrova will introduce trainees to the basic standards of writing a journalistic analysis, pointing out the difference in the way analyses are written in Bulgaria and in the international media, and between a commentary and an analysis.
BIRN Bulgaria’s director will familiarize them with the BIRN house style and give them an opportunity to come up with themes for their own pieces of analysis, based on techniques taught in the course. These may be published in Balkan Insight.
The first day of the workshop will cover the theoretical part of the session while the second will take the form of a brainstorming session aimed at producing potential themes.
Through this workshop, BIRN Bulgaria hopes to contribute to the future careers of the journalists involved.
Besides commissioning articles for Balkan Insight, BIRN Bulgaria will considers taking on one course participant as an intern, as part of his or her professional module.
Balkan Insight is set to increase coverage of Croatia and the EU
integration process now that BIRN’s former regional network director,
Anna McTaggart, has began a new position in Zagreb, building a team of
contributors. “ Croatia’s development is key to the region, not least
because it is closest to EU membership,” said McTaggart. Croatian
journalists interested in participating in the project should contact
[email protected].
Alina Constantinescu and Daniel Ganga, contributors to a BIRN Romania
local project, won honorary mentions in a journalism contest organized
by the Romanian Center for Resources for Roma Communities for fair
reporting on Roma issues. The two reporters are both regular
contributors to Divers (www.divers.ro),
a weekly online publication covering ethnic minorities issues, edited
by BIRN Romania with financial support from the Ethnic Diversity
Resource Center in Cluj, Romania.
Rockfeller Brothers Foundations has awarded BIRN a two-year grant to build capacity in Serbia and Kosovo and aid BIRN’s regional development and visibility. The grant will boost BIRN Kosovo high-profile local TV debates project, “Life in Kosovo” and BIRN Serbia’s drive to train more journalists in areas with a significant ethnic minority population.
BIRN Bulgaria opened a new office at 45 Tsar Simeon Street in Sofia, near the Dundukov Blvd. and Rakovski St. crossing.
This marked an important step in capacity-building for BIRN Bulgaria, enabling the organization to serve as a workplace and information center for Balkan Insight contributors and offer more professional support for journalists seeking to raise their standards.
BIRN Bulgaria is collecting a specialized library of reference materials and manuals that will be useful to all journalists interested in working on investigations or analyses. BIRN Bulgaria will host an opening party for donors, journalists and friends of the organization once final details are complete.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, wishes to add its own expression of shock and deep regret to the widespread expressions of outrage that have greeted the news of the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia’s most outstanding investigative journalists.
As an organisation founded to promote investigative journalism and – above all – to uphold the wider principle of journalistic freedom – we saw Anna Politkovskaya as an outstanding model. Her extraordinary integrity and bravery were an inspiration to the whole profession.
Her assassination can accordingly be seen only as an attack on
investigative journalism and on freedom of information in general.
Some members of this organisation were privileged to meet
Politkovskaya in person, most recently at Summer school of investigatove Journalism organised by the Center for Investigative Jorunalism in London.
BIRN strongly condemns this murder and adds its voice to all those calling on the Russian authorities to carry out an urgent and intensive investigation of the matter.
BIRN is preparing to launch a new network of web sites in September. It will include a new regional portal, a BIRN Kosovo web site, which will host its TV debates amongst other topics, and BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina Justice’s Report.
The programming and designing of the network is the work of Media on Web, MOW, a project established by the Development Loan Fund and the Swedish Helsinki Committee with a view to supporting media development in the western Balkans. After the launch, MOW will work on other BIRN web sites that will host BIRN’s online publication, Balkan Insight, and newsletters that BIRN plans to launch on a partly commercial basis.
BIRN Serbia organised two-day editorial workshop for Serb and Bosniak journalists living in Kosovo on August 27 and 28.
The workshop, part of Minority Training and Reporting Project funded by British Embassy in Belgrade, will be followed by a special issue of Balkan Insight dedicated to Kosovo’s minorities.
The trainees worked with Gordana Igric, editor-in-chief and BIRN regional director, and Dragana Nikolic Solomon, BIRN Serbia director. Krenar Gashi, BIRN Kosovo assistant editor, also assisted in training process.
The trainees were given advice on writing news analysis and features and they received feedback on the articles they produced in the first round of training.
Following a lively discussion about the political situation in Kosovo and the major issues affecting Serb and Bosniak communities there, BIRN editors and journalists were able to identify topics for Balkan Insight articles and develop their structure and focus.
Around seven articles and an investigation will be published as part of a special issue for Balkan Insight in September.
Following publication of the special issue, BIRN trainees will have an opportunity to spend a week working in major Belgrade media outlets, in order to expand their contacts and receive practical journalistic experience.
The journalists will have a choice of working on either RTV B92 or the newspapers Blic daily, Vreme weekly and Danas.
Arsenije Dunic, young journalist from the Goradzevac enclave, said he enjoyed the practical nature of the training, “This kind of training is very useful to me, since it is concrete and can be immediately implemented in every day work. This training is also helpful since there is little theory and the focus is on journalistic practice.”