Tag: BIRN HUB

As part of our unwavering commitment to fostering journalistic cooperation and knowledge exchange between regions, we are thrilled to announce the launch of our Travel & Reporting Grants Program.

This is an exclusive opportunity to embark on a reporting journey, supported by financial assistance, regional expertise and on-the-ground field support in selected countries where BIRN has established offices, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro.

We invite journalists interested in the Balkans to participate in this exceptional program, aimed at generating compelling journalistic output for media outlets in your countries, with the added possibility of being showcased on BIRN’s esteemed Reporting Democracy platform and in prominent local media across the Balkan region.

We encourage the submission of projects for the production of relevant and substantive content. We support production of a variety of journalistic forms, including analysis, investigations, features and interviews. We also welcome cross-border stories, serialized articles, as well as accompanying multimedia material such as videos, photos, and radio or podcast productions.

Elevate your journalistic endeavors, expand your reach and contribute to a thriving media landscape. Apply now and let your stories resonate across borders, engaging audiences with compelling narratives that leave a lasting impression.

Who can apply?

Journalists from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia can apply for grants. We welcome applications from a diverse range of applicants, including:

• Individual journalists, whether operating within newsroom structures or working independently as freelancers
• Collaborative teams consisting of a dynamic mix of reporters, producers, photographers, and video editors
• Forward-thinking media organisations eager to pursue international and cross-border stories

In this grant cycle, we have limited opportunities available, with a maximum of 5 grants set to be awarded to the most deserving applicants.

Grant Details

Successful applicants will be awarded a grant of 2,500 euros, providing the necessary resources to undertake in-depth and impactful journalism stories.

Important Dates:

• Application Deadline: July 31, 2023
• Grant Completion Deadline: December 31, 2023

Each applicant may submit only one application under this grant scheme.

Application Guidelines

To be considered for this grant, your application should include the following components:

• Engaging Topics: Clearly articulate the compelling topic(s) you intend to report on, showcasing their relevance and potential to captivate your target audience.
• Balkan Expedition: Present your well-conceived plans for visiting one or more countries within the Balkan region, supported by a tentative timeline that demonstrates your commitment to thorough research and reporting.
• Publishing and Dissemination Plan: Outline a robust and strategic plan for effectively sharing your journalistic output with the world. Highlight the platforms and channels you will utilize to maximize the impact of your work.

Eligible Expenses

The grant covers a broad range of essential expenses, including:

• Professional fees
• Travel costs
• Accommodation expenses
• Subsistence allowances during fieldwork
• Various production costs, such as translation services, fixers, photographers, etc.

How to apply?

To apply for the Travel & Reporting programme, interested individuals and organizations should utilize the designated application form. Two types of application forms are available: one for individual journalists and teams, and another for media organizations.

Any additional documentation required can be submitted in an online format.

The Application Form must be completed in English.

Please ensure that all provided information is clear and comprehensive, as requests for clarification will only be made when the information provided is insufficient for objective assessment.

The deadline for application submission is 23:59 CET on July 31, 2023. Kindly send your completed application to the following address:

[email protected]

Application for the grant:

• Application for individual journalists and teams
• Application for media organisations

For any further inquiries or assistance, do not hesitate to contact us. We are here to support you throughout the application process.

Evaluation and Selection Process:

Step I: Technical Evaluation

On receiving applications, the BIRN staff will conduct a thorough technical evaluation. This evaluation will ensure that applicants have adhered to the application procedures and submitted all the required documents.

Step II: Editorial Board Evaluation

After the technical evaluation, the applications will undergo a comprehensive assessment by our editorial board. The board will evaluate the applicants based on predetermined criteria, including the quality of the proposed idea, feasibility of the plan, and the potential to effectively reach the intended audience.

Step III: Notification of Applicants

Following the evaluation process, all applicants will be promptly notified of the outcomes. Successful applicants will receive notification by August 15, 2023.

We appreciate your patience during the evaluation period and assure you that we will provide timely updates about your application. We value your dedication to journalistic excellence and eagerly anticipate the opportunity to work with the selected individuals and organisations.

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).

 

Prosecutors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro and representatives of international missions told a conference organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Pristina on Friday that there is a need for the new and improved collaboration protocols between former Yugoslav countries to improve the exchange of evidence and extradition of war crimes indictees.

Ivan Matesic, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor – Head of the Department for War Crimes, told the conference entitled ‘Archives and Conflict Prevention: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future’ that his country currently has 260 pending war crimes cases that need to be investigated, and in half of them the suspects are fugitives abroad and can’t be brought to court.

Most of the people under investigation for war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina are either in Serbia or Croatia, which both refuse to extradite their citizens to Sarajevo.

But other issues are also hampering regional cooperation, such unwillingness to prosecute senior officials responsible for war crimes and a lack of trust among victims, according to Matesic.

“Victims don’t trust judicial institutions from other countries in the region. And for a case to be transferred to the Serbian or Croatian prosecution offices, victims need to give consent and that often takes a lot of time and effort from the Bosnian prosecution to convince them,” Matesic said.

War victims from Bosnia and Herzegovina have expressed discontent about decisions by the Croatian and Serbian judiciaries, which have often classified crimes differently than their counterparts in Sarajevo. Cases related to Srebrenica are prosecuted in Serbia as war crimes rather than genocide, while Croatian courts often give lower sentences to Croat defendants.

Cooperation in war crimes prosecutions is particularly difficult for Kosovo because it is not recognised by its neighbours Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Kosovo war crimes prosecutor Drita Hajdari said that it is also a challenge to get evidence from the successor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, a United Nations institution. Kosovo is not a member of the UN as it is not recognised by the majority of member states.

“Our requests to states rarely get positive answers. And in the case of the ICTY, as it is a UN institution, we can’t cooperate with it directly, so our requests need to go through the justice ministry and EU office, which we are often reluctant to do as the information is very sensitive,” Hajdar said.

“We have sensitive cases, and often there is a privacy concern as the information may be leaked,” she explained.

Civil society organisations also criticised the growing number of trials in absentia in the region.

Sofija Todorovic, director of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Serbia, in absentia trials are often used for political purposes and undermine the right to a fair trial.

Kosovo, Serbia and Croatia have all amended their legislation to allow absentia trials to take place. When Serbia launched a war crimes case against Croatian officers last year it caused a political row between the two countries.

The conference also heard civil society activists and members of cultural and memorial institutions discussing the role of archives in fighting the growing problem of revisionism in the region, as well as preventing the recurrence of crimes.

Velma Saric, director of Post Conflict Research Centre, said this is particularly relevant in countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina where young people are still going to segregated schools and learning different versions of the history of the 1990s wars.

“For us, young people are the key audience and key partner. We used the archives of courts and other civil society groups to create educational programmes and materials. We want to show and teach young people the war through court-determined facts,” Saric said.

Nikola Mokrovic, an archivist from Documenta in Croatia, explained how the rapid pace of technological advancements poses a significant challenge, as archives must constantly adapt to new formats, storage systems and digital preservation methods.

Azir Osmanovic from the Srebrenica Memorial Center emphasised the importance of cooperation and partnership with organisations such as BIRN in order to preserve memories and create educational projects together with war survivors.

The conference also heard a presentation about BIRN’s updated Bitter Land database about mass graves from the wars in the former Yugoslavia and about Reporting House, BIRN’s museum focusing on the role of media in the 1990s wars, which is set to open later this year in Sarajevo.

 

 

Vuk Maras, 37, is Executive Director of BIRN network’s new member, BIRN Montenegro, set up in 2023.

Vuk is based in Podgorica; he studied economics and has worked in the non-profit sector since he was 18 years old, “constantly fighting against corruption and organised crime and advocating for the better rule of law and human rights”, as he told BIRN.

For over three years, he worked as a consultant for BIRN Hub on various projects. He sees his job in BIRN Montenegro more as a duty than as work. In the upcoming months, BIRN Montenegro will produce programmes and investigative stories to inform Montenegrin citizens and other stakeholders, and hold the government and public officials accountable.

Let’s meet him!

1. BIRN Montenegro is the newest BIRN Network member, set up in 2023. Would you like to tell us more about it?

Montenegro is the only Western Balkan country where BIRN did not have a local office, so this was a logical step for the network. In a situation where the quality of journalism is constantly in decline, where investigative journalism is an exception rather than a common practice, it was necessary to bring something new to the citizens of Montenegro. Moreover, with recent changes to the regime that was ruling Montenegro for over three decades, it is of the utmost importance to ensure that the old corrupt practices do not continue and that Montenegro is able to build institutions that will secure its Euro-Atlantic integration, but also bring a better appreciation of human rights to all its citizens. BIRN Montenegro will investigate cases and bring high-quality news to the public discourse in order to inform Montenegrin citizens and other stakeholders, and to hold the government and public officials accountable.

2. What drove you to work for BIRN Montenegro, specifically for a media non-profit? What do you like most in your new job, and what is the most challenging thing?

Short answer – lack of justice. I have been an active part of the Montenegrin non-profit sector since I was 18, constantly fighting against corruption and organised crime and advocating for better rule of law and human rights. With such a personal background, BIRN Montenegro, but also the entire BIRN family, is a logical continuation of something I believe is my cause, rather than work.

3. How was the process of forming a media non-profit in Montenegro from scratch? Did you confront difficulties? How did you overcome them?

At this point, we are still finalizing the paperwork and expect our portal to be fully operational in a few months’ time. But through this process, we were able to see how the bureaucracy, inherited even from communist times, can sometimes make life impossible for those fighting for changes and reforms.

4. What shall we expect from BIRN Montenegro in the coming months?

Many interesting investigative stories, hopefully a lot of truthful and professional news pieces, and a lot of activities in the field, improving the overall media scene in Montenegro.

5. What advice would you give to people currently trying to form a media non-profit in the region?

I would say, no matter how hard it sometimes looks, it pays off, as media and NGOs are the key pillars in each country in the region that are protecting democracy and human rights.

 

 

Twenty videos showing people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia speaking about their experiences of the wars of the 1990s have been published on BIRN’s YouTube channel.

Some of the survivors talk about their childhood memories of fleeing their homes and being forcibly displaced from their hometowns, while others share emotional stories of losing loved ones. Some also speak about their involvement in psychotherapy for survivors and transitional justice activism.

The videos are the result of a training workshop for 11 young journalists, students, activists and other interested people held in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in October 2022.

The Visual Storytelling Using War Crime Archives workshop organised by BIRN’s Transitional Justice Programme was aimed at educating participants in how to contribute to reconciliation and memorialisation processes by exploring archives and using them for independent video storytelling.

Participants learned how to create a safe, non-partisan and compassionate space for survivors to tell their stories and how to produce stories in a short video format that do not trivialise war crimes and war victims’ experiences.

“Youth involvement in transitional justice efforts is essential to promote intergenerational dialogue, foster social cohesion and strengthen the sustainability of peacebuilding,” said Nejra Mulaomerovic, the coordinator of BIRN’s Transitional Justice Programme.

“Young people, particularly those who have been affected by conflict, have a unique perspective on the impact of violence and injustice on their lives and communities. Their engagement in the transitional justice process can help to ensure that the next generation is invested in promoting accountability, reconciliation and peace,” she added.

Mulaomerovic said that storytelling is crucial to the process of transitional justice because it has the power to highlight atrocities and hidden personal memories that can be used to encourage the further sharing of similar experiences.

“Storytelling also has the power to change the narrative surrounding personal experiences of war trauma. The dominant narrative around war often centres on the nationalistic perspective, which can overshadow the human cost of war, including the experiences of civilians,” she said.

“Through storytelling, victims and survivors can challenge this dominant narrative and humanise the experiences of those affected by war,” she added.

BIRN published another series of videos of survivors’ stories after a previous workshop in 2021 about storytelling and transitional justice reporting.

The videos produced by the participants were posted on BIRN’s social media channels, where they were viewed by more than 115,000 people on various platforms.

See all the videos on BIRN’s YouTube channel here.

 

 

The EU Award for Investigative Journalism 2023 is now accepting submissions. Once again, the prestigious award celebrates the best investigative stories published in the previous calendar year and open to journalists from the Western Balkans and Türkiye.

This year, as well as national awards, the EU Award is introducing a regional award for the best stories from the entire region based on clearly defined criteria. This new category is an exciting development that will encourage journalists to think beyond national borders and tackle issues that affect the entire region.

The annual award fund for each of the countries is 10,000 euros and the prize fund for regional awards is also 10,000 euros. The three best stories of the year are awarded, and the amount for national and regional prizes is 5,000 euros (first place), 3,000 (second), and 2,000 (third).

Stories that can be nominated should contribute to freedom of expression, the rule of law and transparency. They should cover a variety of topics affecting national and regional economies, challenges to countries’ EU integration processes and issues such as organised crime, corruption, the rise of extremism, various forms of foreign influence, human rights violations, including those in the digital sphere, as well as other topics with which the public would not otherwise be familiar.

Entries can be nominated for the national or regional award, or for both, and this possibility is offered through the application form itself. Additionally, one candidate may apply to the competition with several stories.

The winners from the national awards in the Western Balkan region and Türkiye automatically become candidates for the regional EU award for investigative journalism, if their application form so states. The jury for both the national and the regional awards consists of local and international media experts, editors, members of academia and journalists with merits.

The organiser of the award is Thomson Media, an organisation with decades of experience in media development and the promotion of media freedom on a global level.

The EU Award for Investigative Journalism 2023 is part of the project Strengthening Quality Journalism in Western Balkans and Türkiye II. It aims to recognise and promote outstanding achievements in investigative journalism as well as improve the visibility of quality journalism in the Western Balkans and Türkiye.

The project is funded by the European Union, and is being implemented by a consortium composed of Balkan Investigative Reporting Network – BIRN Hub, Central European University (CEU) – Hungary, Association of Journalists (AJ) – Türkiye, Thomson Media (TM) – Germany, University Goce Delcev Stip (UGD) – North Macedonia, The Independent Union of Journalists and Media Workers (SSNM) – North Macedonia, Media Association of South-East Europe (MASE) – Montenegro and Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Kosovo (BIRN Kosovo).

The deadline for submissions is June 20, 2023, by midnight CET.

For more details, contact [email protected].

To download all necessary documents for English click here

To download all necessary documents for Serbia click here

To download all necessary documents for Kosovo click here

To download all necessary documents for Bosnia and Herzegovina click here

To download all necessary documents for Montenegro click here

To download all necessary documents for North Macedonia click here

To download all necessary documents for Albania click here

To download all necessary documents for Turkey click here