Wie wir wirken
Eine Geschichte der Zusammenarbeit
Das European Collaborative Journalism Programme (ECJP) dient der Förderung der Vernetzung und Zusammenarbeit von Journalist:innen aus ganz Europa. Jährlich werden bis zu 16 Journalist:innen eingeladen, um im Seminarzentrum Gut Siggen sowie auf der Dataharvest-Konferenz in Mechelen, Belgien kollaborative Rechercheprojekte zu entwickeln und Input von Expert:innen und Kolleg:innen zu erhalten. Das ECJP wird gemeinsam mit Arena for Journalism in Europe organisiert.
Besonders wertvoll sind für die Toepfer Stiftungen die Erfahrungen und Berichte von Teilnehmer:innen unserer Programme. Hazel Sheffield nimmt uns im folgenden Bericht mit auf ihre Reise rund um das ECJP-Programm 2020. Sie erinnert sich an den Ablauf der investigativen Recherche Money to Burn, die den zweiten Platz beim European Press Prize Innovation Award 2021 erreichte - eine Geschichte der Zusammenarbeit:
In February 2020, I was invited to Siggen, a tiny village in the northeast of Germany, to attend a workshop about cross-border investigative journalism. I had never done this kind of work before – cooperating with reporters across borders online, to track trade, finance and people moving around in a globalised world. I was instantly attracted by the opportunity to reach outwards, beyond my island nation, at a time when Britain felt more and more isolated.
In Siggen, as guests of the German non-profit the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, we were trained to do this work: how to work together online, win grants and develop stories. But more than that, we found collaborators: like-minded people with ideas and the energy to start something new. We came away with a team, and a kernel of an idea that deforestation in Estonia might be linked to European renewable energy subsidies.
Ein Spaziergang zum Siggener Strand, Februar 2020
After three months of research and constant conversation with my new colleagues, we applied for a grant from the IJ4EU. I had never applied to this grant before, but we knew what to do thanks to the contacts and training we had received at ECJP, and I have no doubt that it is in part thanks to the programme that we were awarded €50,000 for our project.
Everything that came afterwards arrived with the shock of the new. Cross-border work of this kind is making huge leaps, but it is a fairly recent phenomenon, and I turned to the contacts I made at ECJP as experts in the field again and again as the project took shape. It is easy to forget that cross-border work can be lonely: its practitioners often work in different countries and meet on screens. I was fortunate that the three-months of our investigation coincided with Dataharvest, the Arena festival. Its frequent online sessions coached me into the role of investigation coordinator, helping me develop confidence in the skills I had first learned at ECJP. Our project, Money to Burn, was nominated for many international awards and ended up being highly commended by the European Press Prize.
- Hazel Sheffield
Bild: A drone image of an area of cleared forest in Haanja Nature Reserve, southern Estonia. Urheberrecht: Liis Treimann.