BIRN Hub News and Events

This year’s Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence gets underway, as ten journalists attend an opening seminar in the Austrian capital.

The training “How to Write for Culture Watch Online Magazine” began today in Pristina. Thirteen journalists from the region are participating in the event, part of the Balkan Initiative for Cultural Cooperation, Exchange, and Development. Their active involvement will help establish a positive environment for policy makers in-country and abroad to create policies that speed up the region’s European-oriented transition.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is organising a training session for journalists – How to write for Culture Watch Online Magazine – as a part of the Balkan Initiative for Cultural Cooperation, Exchange and Development, BICCED, project. The training will be held in Pristina, from March 17 to 18 and will involve journalists from across the region.

Balkan Investigative Regional Reporting Network has launched its Balkan Culture Watch Strengthening Project, funded by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF). The BCWSP project is a “build-on” project that complements the existing three-year “Balkan’s Initiative for Cultural Cooperation, Exchange and Development Project” (BICCED, funded by the SCP), which aims to support a constant production of analytical reporting on culture-related developments in five countries (Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo) through a monthly newsletter (Culture Watch / CW), and support the media in the region with coverage of culture by offering analytical reports free of charge.

Seize your chance to investigate stories about justice at home and abroad with funded research, travel expenses and career development seminars in Berlin and Vienna.

The promotion of this year’s collection of articles, Taboo: Secrecy and Shame in the Balkans, which wraps up the 2010 edition of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, gathered leading Macedonian journalists and editors on December 21 at the Journalists’ club in Skopje.

“Digging Deeper”, a guide for Investigative Journalists in the Balkans, was published in English in 2009.

Here is what participants of the first BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting have said about the school:

Access to freedom-of-information laws is a key way for investigative journalists to unearth stories, a human rights professional Helen Darbishire has told reporters attending BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting.

Investigative journalists don’t have to cut emotion out of their story as the story is dead without emotions, journalist and trainer Mark Lee Hunter told reporters attending BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting.

Addressing participants of the BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting, BBC journalist Nick Thorpe has explained the techniques for making people talk and how to work with anonymous sources.

Journalists in the Balkans are coming under increasing pressure from politicians and business people, media experts have told participants of the BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting.

As part of BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting, Paul Radu has tried to explain, by going through personal experience, how to track organised crime over borders and offshore.

How to track organised crime and corruption, to deal with victims of trauma  and how to outsmart Google were some of the main topics of the third day of BIRN Summer School of Investigating Reporting held in the Serbian town of Novi Sad.

Leading journalists and trainers from all over Europe have gathered in the Serbian town of Novi Sad to take part in the first BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting.