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Applications are solicited under this year’s theme, Choices. Successful applicants will be selected by an independent committee to take part in our ten-month programme for professional development, culminating in the production of a compelling longform story to be published by BIRN and its media partners.

Our output takes the form of features, analysis and investigations, presented in depth for a global audience. We emphasise strong storytelling and rigorous, on-the-ground reporting – qualities traditionally associated with the best magazine journalism.

The Fellowship provides:

• a bursary of €3,000
• the chance to improve your reporting skills by working in close collaboration with world-class editors
• ongoing mentoring and support from BIRN’s leading regional journalistic network, present in 14 countries of the Central and SEE region
• the opportunity to participate in an introductory seminar focused on reporting and storytelling techniques
• the chance to win additional awards worth between 1.000 and 3.000 euros for the best three stories
• worldwide publication of reports in local languages and English through our network of media partners
• membership of the Fellowship alumni network, designed to support networking between fellows who have participated in the programme since 2007

This year’s call is open until March 31st. Please send us your proposal using the official application form.

To maximize your chances of a successful application read more about the programme including the tips from our editors.

Here to inspire you is our editor, Neil Arun:

This year’s theme, Choices, asks you to picture your story along a pathway of options and decisions. We want to know a little bit about the events and the processes, the ideologies and the policies, that created the conditions for the story that you want to tell. In other words, as well as answering the usual questions – the who, what, where, how and why of your story – we want you to think about how we got here, and where might we be going next.

How is the problem that you want to examine a product of decisions taken in the past? How might this problem also reflect an ongoing failure to take the right decisions? What factors influence the decision-makers – what is their bias? The anthropologist, David Graeber, said: “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” Perhaps this view also holds true for your story; perhaps you disagree with it. Either way, it should get you thinking along the right lines.

The theme is broad, as always, in order to accommodate a broad range of your applications. Do not worry if the story you have in mind does not seem an obvious fit: we prefer a strong proposal that fits the theme loosely over a weak proposal that fits the theme neatly. The purpose of the theme is to inspire you, and to test your ability to argue the case for your story according to some external, and somewhat arbitrary, criteria.

We are looking above all for stories that tell us something new about the world – or that reveal the familiar in a new light. And as always, the best pitches establish a link between the specific and the general. So, where you only have a general idea for the story that you want to cover, please also think about the specifics – the incidents, institutions and individuals – that can illuminate your idea. Conversely, if you have a very specific story that you want to pursue, please also consider what it means in general terms, in a European context.

A good Fellowship story will be the product of months and months of your dedication as a reporter – meeting people, sifting through documents, revising drafts, and examining every possible angle with an editor. If your pitch holds the promise of just such a story, it has a decent chance of success.

About the Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence

The Fellowship has been providing journalists with editorial guidance and funding to pursue agenda-setting stories for more than 15 years. Aimed at promoting the development of a robust and responsible press, the programme has helped shape journalistic standards across the region while boosting the careers of participating reporters.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and Erste Foundation set up the Fellowship in 2007 with a view to encouraging in-depth cross-border reporting in south-eastern Europe. In 2020, the programme was expanded to include four central European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

To read our stories and find out more about the Fellowship please visit the Fellowship official page.

The new memorial room, entitled ‘The Lives Behind the Fields of Death’, opened on Tuesday at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, with the intention of highlighting survivors’ stories and combatting genocide denial.

A joint project by BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, it contains 100 video testimonies from survivors and personal items that they donated to the Memorial Centre’s museum collection. The testimonies can also be watched online on a special BIRN site.

BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina’s director Denis Dzidic said he was grateful to the 100 survivors and the family members of those who were killed in the July 1995 genocide for deciding to share their worst experiences and publicly speak about the consequences of genocide.

“This platform and memorial room aim to bring the Srebrenica story back to people’s personal experiences and contributing to reducing genocide denial and the misuse of genocide for political purposes. Nobody can remain unmoved by these stories,” Dzidic said.

The project was supported by the Netherlands, whose ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jan Waltmans, told the opening ceremony that one reason why the exhibition is important because it gives “a human dimension” to the facts and figures about the genocide which have been determined by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

“We must never forget the Srebrenica genocide, neither the victims nor the survivors. The second reason is that education remains a cornerstone in attempts to prevent future wars, atrocities and genocides,” said Waltmans.

“During the first six months of my term in office in Bosnia and Herzegovina, through conversations, I have learned a lot about the pain and sorrow of people who survived the genocide, about families of victims who miss the presence of their relatives every day,” he added.

He also said that he had met “many resilient people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who believe in and fight for a country in which there is no room for inflammatory rhetoric and divisions, for a society in which children play together irrespective of their origin”.

High Representative Christian Schmidt, the senior international official responsible for overseeing the implementation of the peace process that ended the Bosnian war, said that the genocide continued to have an impact on life today in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I come from a society in which successive generations dealt with genocide legacy. This process was painful and continued for decades. It was often interrupted by denial, partly because the crime in itself is unimaginable – one doesn’t believe in it,” said Schmidt, who is German.

“For that reason, a court investigation and detailed and empirical historic investigations are necessary. The reconciliation process cannot go on without it,” he added.

Johann Sattler, the EU Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who also attended the opening ceremony, warned that “the culture of genocide and crime denial continues to live”.

“The EU and many others here today are really working tirelessly and we are trying to learn lessons from the past and look towards the future, to preserve the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Sattler.

The president of the managing board of the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, Sefket Hafizovic, said that the memorial room would be “proof of genocide” but also proof that it was the consequence of “ethnic nationalism”.

“The crime of genocide is a crime against the whole of humanity,” added Hasan Hasanovic, oral history team leader at the Memorial Centre.

Watch the video testimonies at BIRN’s The Lives Behind the Fields of Death site here.

 

 

The IPI report, titled “Hungarian Capital in Foreign Media. Three Strategic Models of Influencing the Neighbourhood”, includes articles examining how, where and why Hungary has invested in foreign media in recent years.

Part of the report focuses on how businessmen close to Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party have purchased media outlets in Slovenia and North Macedonia since 2017.

“While Fidesz politicians insist such investments are purely commercial, heavy investments in these media have been used to support Janes Jansa’s SDS in Slovenia and the fugitive former North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s VMRO DPMNE” the IPI said. [Jansa is a close ally of the Hungarian Prime Minister.]

Another part casts more light on Fidesz’s influence on media in Hungarian-minority communities in Serbia, Romania, and Slovakia, which have all received financial support from Budapest, bringing their media into close alignment with Orban’s populist narrative.

The third part of the report pays attention to the establishment in 2019 of a new international news agency, V4NA, in London, which projects Fidesz’s narrative further, onto a pan-European media landscape.

IPI is an international association of media professionals representing leading digital, print and broadcast news outlets in nearly 100 countries, dedicated to defending media freedom and the free flow of news.

The articles in IPI’s latest report were produced by IPI in cooperation with BIRN, the Hungarian investigative reporting outlet Átlátszó and its Hungarian-language partner in Romania, Átlátszó Erdély, as well as the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University’s Democracy Institute.

Journalists and writers from the Balkans are invited to register for a two-day online training course on practicing gender-responsive reporting on human trafficking and violence against women.

The main idea behind the training is to examine and expose worrying and increasing trends in the incidence and prevalence of gender-based violence, both in the offline and online sphere in the Balkan region, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The training will be led by experienced activists from NGO ATINA, an organisation that has been running a direct support programme for trafficking and gender-based survivors in Serbia for 18 years now.

Designed to offer a deep insight into ways to avoid the most common mistakes in reporting on human trafficking and violence against women, the training will also offer participants a chance to practice methods of communication with survivors of violence. They should also encourage journalists and writers to apply the methods and lessons learned in their everyday work, raising the quality of their journalism.

The training will be held on March 2nd – 3rd, 2022.

Applicants must register for the training by filling out the form located below. The number of participants is limited, so please register no later than February 28th. Scroll down for registration.

The training will be held in English language, from 10am to 2pm. Each training day will consist of two 1.5-hour-long sessions that will encompass interactive exercises, facilitated discussions, with an evidence-based approach to group work in practicing gender-responsive reporting on human trafficking and violence against women. At the beginning and at the end of the training course, there will be a questionnaire, and participants will be invited to keep a journalistic diary.

Agenda

Day I

10:00 – 10:30  Introduction of participants, topic and activities

10:30 – 12:00  Not victimhood reporting, but promotion of the agency of women

• Proactive role of journalists in understanding the context of human trafficking and violence against women (meaning of the phenomenon, why it happens, who are the perpetrators and who are the victims, what are the main trends and statistics, involvement of journalists in the process of identification, referral, assistance and court proceedings)

12:00 – 12:30  Break

12:30 – 14:00  How to avoid the most common mistakes while reporting on human trafficking and violence against women

• Deconstruction of stereotypes and prejudices

Day II

10:00 – 10:30  Warm-up and recapitulation of the previous day

10:30 – 12:00 Why wording matters

• Communication with survivors and practicing preferred terminology for reporting

12:00 – 12:30  Break

12:30 – 14:00  Reporting on specific types of violence against women

• Understanding of violence and abuse in the digital sphere

For more information, contact: Jelena Hrnjak ([email protected]).

Please register here and select a preferred slot. Upon registration, you will receive an email confirmation, and a Zoom link will be sent to all participants a few days before the training course.

The training is being organised with support from the Balkan Trust for Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Belgrade.

At one of the series of Platform B events, on Friday, BIRN presented its interactive publication produced within the project Local Journalism – European Perspectives.

The publication was created in collaboration with nine local media outlets from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia.

Among other things, the publication aims to help journalists learn about alternative financing models and the opportunities that online fundraising and crowdfunding provide – and learn how to recognize fake news and limit its distribution.

It also explains the importance of local media collaboration and cross-border stories in giving stories wider coverage and impact and so becoming societal gamechangers.

While local media face similar struggles everywhere, panelists discussed their resilience and how we can learn from colleagues from the region and beyond.

The focus of the first part of the event was on an exchange between media representatives and journalists from EU countries who face the same or similar problems in their work in the region.

Anna Petersen, editor at Landeszeitung Lüneburg from Germany, spoke about the struggles of local newspapers to satisfy the need for information in smaller communities and the effect of the transformation created by technological upheaval and digitalization.

But Petersen stated: “This should not be a burden. We should discover new possibilities there.”

She added that digitalization and platform development have their advantages because media can reach a broader audience more easily. She also undermined that she believes that print format has not reached the end of its existence. “I don’t like to say that paper format is out, that it is over. Maybe the paper format will be viewed as a medium of deceleration,” she suggested.

“It is important that people are interested in new formats and that they experience them as an additional value because they are an additional content to print edition,” she added.

Márton Kárpáti, founder and CEO of Telex.hu in Hungary, shared his experience of starting a new media outlet, and how he was able to finance and create an independent voice for open debate and democratic discussion.

Kárpáti stated that all Telex’s employees, around 70 of them, worked previously for Index.hu, Hungary’s biggest online news site.  After their independence and belief in what journalism should be were compromised, they had decided to start their own website Telex.hu.

“We had no money. We had nothing. We didn’t know what would happen. But we believed in our staff and believed in readers. Some days after we quit, we asked the readers and possible supporters to help us out, and support us with money,” he said.

In just a few days, they received around one million euros that gave them a safe start. “We were the first crowdfunded news site starting from zero,” Kárpáti added. Now they are the third or fourth biggest news site in Hungary.

Speaking of the importance of cooperation and cross border journalism, Brigitte Alfter, director of Arena for Journalism in Europe, said cross-border journalism should be utilized when it can bring something beneficial but should be used only when there is a shared interest of all participants.

“If there is not a shared interest, don’t use it,” she said, adding: “Use it as much as it helps you. Be sure that it will help you at some point, but don’t use it all the time. Use it when it is necessary.”

In the second part of the event, Amer Bahtijar, president of Tačno.net from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Darija Ranković, editor of Kolubarske from Serbia and Ivana Petrović, editor of City Smart Radio from Serbia, talked about issues they shared as independent local media outlets.

“We are all facing similar problems and issues but they have different phenomena,” said Petrović, adding that “political influence is also accompanied by a huge inflow of money into the pockets of the regime’s loyal media, which has made the marketing opportunities for independent media almost non-existent.”

This is still a lasting problem for local media outlets in the region, but by networking and through collaboration with other local media and beyond the region, some changes and positive results can be made, she said.

As primarily a media organisation, we want to open space and provide a platform to discuss and reshape our alliances in light of the challenges facing democracies in South-East and Central Europe.

This effort comes at a critical time when the region is seeing several troubling trends: centralized power, reduced transparency, assaults on media, politicized judiciaries, unchecked corruption, online violations, and social polarization – all amidst heightened geopolitical tensions and deep divisions in Europe.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, the Platform B event series will be organised in accordance with all relevant health measures. As the situation improves, we hope to be able to host some of the events in BIRN spaces in Sarajevo and Belgrade, and elsewhere in the region.

Platform B will be an opportunity for individuals and groups to meet monthly on selected topics.

Next event: Resilience of local media – what can we learn from the region and beyond?

Date: January 28, 2022 (Friday)

Time: 11am-1pm, CET

Local media in the region face a number of structural problems, which have got worse since the pandemic started. The aim of this online event is to discuss the perspectives of local journalism in the Western Balkans through a discussion of media professionals from the region and the EU. During the event, we will also present an interactive publication that will hopefully become an important resource for all local media in the region. 

The first part of the event aims at an exchange between media representatives and journalists from EU countries who face the same or similar problems in their work as media in the region. 

Panelists that will take part in the discussion include: 

Anna Petersen, editor at Landeszeitung Lüneburg, Germany

Márton Kárpáti, CEO of Telex.hu, Hungary

Brigitte Alfter, director of Arena for Journalism in Europe

The panel will be moderated by Besar Likmeta, BIRN’s editor in Albania. 

The second part of the event will be dedicated to tackling specific issues related to the local media in the region. By creating room for discussion on three specific topics, we will try to reach conclusions and come up with possible solutions to some of the problems that local media face. This discussion will be moderated by Amer Bahtijar, president of Tačno.net from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Darija Ranković, editor of Kolubarske from Serbia and Ivana Petrović, editor of City Smart Radio from Serbia.

More information can be found in the agenda.

You can register for the event HERE.  

This event is organized in cooperation with partner organization n-ost within the project “Local journalism – European perspectives”. 

 

At one of the series of Platform B events, on Friday, BIRN presented the main findings of its report on the position of female journalists in the Balkans, “Women in Newsrooms: Perspectives on Equity, Diversity and Resilience”, which concluded, among other things, that, a “one-size-fits-all approach” to fixing issues women journalists face is not practical, as these women are not a “monolithic” group.

The report includes 21 interviews and a survey filled in by 175 participants, whose responses highlighted trends, opportunities and obstacles, identified through the sharing of experiences and perspectives by women working in the media, to paint a more nuanced and complex picture of women’s role in newsrooms, news-making and the region’s societies more broadly.

“When it comes to women journalists, prevailing narratives have focused on almost exclusively online violence and women’s vulnerability, rather than on the systems that make this type of abuse prevalent, normalized and even profitable,” the report notes, adding that, “when women who are proven to create space for narratives that fall outside of mainstream dialogue are marginalized, the negative implications for society are compounded”.

The report’s six sections depict women as : a monolith; a liability; a workforce; a community; as accessories; and as guerrillas, as “an attempt to paint a picture that is more nuanced – to address the intersecting identities and diverse experiences that actually characterize women’s media – and newsroom more specifically – participation and representation in the Western Balkans”.

In BIRN’s debate on Friday, the co-authors of the report, Bojana Kostic and Jennifer Adams, emphasized the need for “solidarity zones  – spaces created by and for women for support, innovation and connection”, where women can support each other “online and minimize their exposure to social media” which, as the report reads, has “since its inception, failed to provide a safe space for women and marginalized populations”.

One of the panelists, Elida Zylbeari, ethnic Albanian editor-in-chief of the North Macedonian-based Portalb.mk, said that being a journalist can be difficult both as a woman and as part of a minority ethnic group in North Macedonia.

“There’s a (first) language barrier and privilege; the community thinks Macedonians are more important than Albanians, so, when it comes to government briefings, for example, you see even fewer Albanian female journalists,” Zylbeari said, adding that “other minorities (Turks, Bosnians, etc) are practically non-existent – left out, taken less seriously, and undermined”.

Women journalists in the Western Balkans “are not taken seriously”, as Zylbeari points out. Katarina Radović, a journalist for a regional broadcaster from Novi Pazar in Serbia, agrees. Certain professions such as teaching are perceived as more suitable for women than “being a journalist”, she said.

Adams said international organisations that work in media and women empowerment should work more “to reflect change” and make sure increasing women’s safety in the newsrooms is not translated into a narrative about women being weaker.

“We [international organisations] wanted to push for women’s safety in the newsroom, but the lack of response had the opposite effect. Many women in international media were sent to smaller events because they are considered weaker,” Adams lamented, explaining that, “despite the online violence that is more towards women than men, the reality of women … is not one of weakness”.

Kostic called for more focus on “solidarity zones”, for women to “continue being outspoken”, and for stakeholders to “continue empowering women journalists” by learning lessons from existing women movements.

Together with our partners, BIRN is launching a series of online and offline events aimed at amplifying the voices of strong and credible individuals and organisations in the region that promote the core values of democracy, such as civic engagement, independent institutions, transparency and the rule of law.

As a primarily media organisation, we want to open space and provide a platform to discuss and reshape our alliances in light of the challenges facing democracies in Southeastern and Central Europe.

This comes at a critical time when the region is seeing several troubling trends towards: centralized power, reduced transparency, assaults on media, politicized judiciaries, unchecked corruption, online violations and social polarization – all amid heightened geopolitical tensions and divisions in Europe.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, Platform B event series will be organised with respect for with all relevant health measures. As the situation improves, we hope to be able to host some of the events in BIRN spaces in Sarajevo and Belgrade, and elsewhere in the region.

Platform B will be an opportunity for individuals and groups to meet monthly on selected topics.

Next event: Women in Newsrooms: Perspectives on Equity, Diversity and Resilience

Date: January 14, 2022 (Friday)

Time: 3pm-4.30pm CET

At this event, BIRN will present the main findings of its report on the position of female journalists in the Balkans, Women in Newsrooms: Perspectives on Equity, Diversity and Resilience.

The report highlights trends, opportunities and obstacles, identified through the sharing of experiences and perspectives by women working in the media, to paint a more nuanced and complex picture of women’s role in newsrooms, news-making and regional societies more broadly. When it comes to women journalists, prevailing narratives have focused almost exclusively on online violence and women’s vulnerability, rather than on the systems that make this type of abuse prevalent, normalized and even profitable.

This report, and accompanying platform, is an attempt to paint a picture that is more nuanced – to address the intersecting identities and diverse experiences that actually characterize women’s media – and newsrooms more specifically – and their participation and representation in the  Balkans.

The report includes in-depth interviews with more than 20 female journalists, editors, fact-checkers, editor-in-chiefs and activists as well as a broad data collection, comprising a total of 175 responses BIRN obtained through an online survey conducted in October and November 2021.

Together with the authors and regional journalists and gender equality experts, we will reflect on the findings of BIRN’s report and offer some recommendations to regional media outlets, journalists’ unions and institutions on how to advance women’s positions in the newsrooms and stop perceiving them as victims but as agents of change.

A complete list of panelists is to be published soon.

Upon registration you will receive a Zoom link.

Semira Degirmendžić, Nino Bilajac, Mubarek Asani, and Džana Brkanić are the winners of the European Union’s Awards for Investigative Journalism in 2021 for stories published in 2020.

The awards were presented on Wednesday, December 15, at BIRN’s Reporters’ House in Sarajevo.

Degirmendžić won first prize for the best investigative story in 2020, “Agricultural farm got 10.5 million marks for the purchase of respirators”, which resonated strongly with the public last year.

In her comprehensive research, Degirmendzic revealed that the supplier of the respirators did not obtain the necessary permits from the Medicines Agency to import the respirators from China.

Together with Fikret Hodzic, owner of the supplier company Srebrna malina, Prime Minister Fadil Novalic and the head of the crisis staff, Fahrudin Solak were all involved in the affair.

Mubarek Asani and Nino Bilajac, journalists from the Centre for Investigative Journalism, won second prize for their story about a network of vote traffickers in the northern Brcko District.

“Vote selling network exposed by CIN reporters“ was conducted by the journalists in cooperation with the police and the Prosecutor’s Office, who infiltrated the organisers of the scam as intermediaries between the vote-seller and the local politician to whom these votes were supposed to bring victory.

Both the local politician and the seller were later arrested. This research also resulted in the arrest of eight others – three members of the local assembly members and five intermediaries.

Third prize went to Dzana Brkanic, a BIRN BiH journalist, for her story about fake humanitarian organisations deceiving citizens and collecting donations to build wells in African countries.

The story, “Murky Bosnian Charity Appeals for African Wells Raise Concerns”, revealed the misuse of humanitarian funds and non-transparency of collecting and spending of more than 4 million Bosnian marks.

Inadequate controls over such humanitarian actions and associations is one of Moneyval’s recommendations to Bosnia, which is why this research was extremely timely.

It led to the termination of projects, the closure of the accounts on social media through which the funds were being collected, as well as the confessions of the main actors that evidence on the construction of wells in African countries was photoshopped.

The head of the EU Delegation and EU Special Representative in BiH Johann Sattler, addressing the audience in Sarajevo, emphasized the importance of the work of investigative journalists who reported on some of the irregularities that occurred during the pandemic.

Sattler highlighted that journalists are the ones who have raised important issues in society, including those related to the EU integration process.

In their explanation of this year’s awards, the jury composed of Zlatan Music, Davor Glavas and Slavoljub Scekic said that all three stories

were of crucial importance for Bosnia and the public.

The chairman of the jury, Music, praised the courage of the journalists, and their commitment to the topics, reflected in their research, and presentations with an abundance of details and data.

All three investigations were socially responsible and pointed out irregularities that the government not only ignored but in some cases also participated in, he said.

He added that the number of attacks on journalists was growing, due to the work they do, and he called on them to use all available protection mechanisms.

BIRN director Marija Ristic, said that we need responsible journalism today more than ever, to bring about change and have a greater impact on the public.

The awards were presented at the Reporters’ House, which will become a BIRN space and museum dedicated to journalists and media during the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, and will also serve as a meeting and learning place for all journalists.

The focus of the EU Award for Investigative Journalism is to celebrate and promote outstanding investigative journalism in the Western Balkans and Turkey, as well as to improve the visibility of investigative journalism among readers in these countries.

The EU Award for Investigative Journalism is awarded as part of the EU-funded project “Strengthening the Quality of News and Independent Journalism in the Western Balkans and Turkey” in 2019, 2020 and 2021 in candidate and potential candidate countries: Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. Awards are given for research stories published between 2018 and 2020. A total of 63 awards will be presented over a three-year period.

The awards in Bosnia and Herzegovina are coordinated by the BIRN Hub, which also runs a regional consortium.