Focus Areas

Various initiatives in the region already collaborate within specific geographical areas, such as project’s Co-Applicants COPEAM and CMFE, topics (BIRN, OCCRP, International Fact-checking Network, GIJN and others) or within specific genres and stories such as Press Start. At the same time, without a common Europe-wide platform, these networks are working rather in parallel than in synergy. This sub-action is going to strengthen and multiply journalistic partnerships in Europe by providing already existing and emerging networks and hubs with a new platform and information hub that will make them more salient and interconnected with other like-minded initiatives.

This “Network of Networks” developed by the consortium under the guidance of Co-Applicant Free Press Unlimited will be a horizontal structure that will promote universal standards of journalistic practices and enhance professional trust-based cooperation, including on specific topics of public interest, thus instilling systemic change across the wider news media ecosystem.

Within this Work Package, the Collaborative and Investigative Journalism Initiative (CIJI) will expand into all Creative Europe’s members and candidates, taking into account the lessons learned from the pilot stage and allowing for greater inclusion and variety of members. It will serve as a ‘glue’ connecting various news media actors.

More specifically, the project will achieve this by:

• Creating a flexible and constantly updating directory of journalistic/media networks with the possibility to search through partners media and journalists based on their specialization, geography, experience in cross-border collaboration and (self-assessed) adherence to Journalism Trust Initiative’s standards. This directory will include not only CIJI members but other hubs, networks or initiatives as well, which will receive the opportunity to apply for adding based on their answers to the online questionnaire.
• Creating and running a Content Opportunity for Public Interest Collaborations (COPIC) of news media available to the CIJI members. It will focus on journalistic content that has a longer “expiry date” than a usual news cycle. This will be just a first step to help news media learn the work cycles and approaches of each other and see the benefit of co-productions. With the increasing number of them becoming part of CIJI’s network of networks, we expect media to form longer-term collaboration ‘pairs’ or ‘clusters’. 
• Developing expertise of news media networks in best practice sharing across all Creative Europe's area, with a special focus on structural and technological challenges faced by members.

By promoting the production and dissemination of quality contents and the fight against disinformation, this sub-action will foster a better media reporting of cross-border issues, while stimulating public debate and ultimately strengthening social cohesion.

Within the scope of the pilot project and this particular work package we propose to implement different types of actions for the three different topical clusters:

1. Journalism training courses on migration
2. Climate change fellowships
3. Community media strengthening public health literacy

Access to these training offers and knowledge hubs is reserved for network participants.

With migration being a highly technical, debated and sensitive subject in the Euro-Mediterranean region, which goes beyond mere reporting on figures, and given the media’s fundamental role in shaping narratives and forming public opinion, it is paramount that journalists have the necessary knowledge and skills to report on migration in an evidence and rights-based manner.

The “Effective reporting on migration” trainings – taking place in person and online – will aim at enhancing the quality of media coverage of migration, by providing the latest available knowledge and expertise to ensure that journalists and media professionals have a firm understanding of the complex issues related to migration and its impact on policy-making, politics, economics, demographics, environment, security, education and cultures of the region, and to better inform the public on this complex and often polarizing issue.

Climate change issues do not get proper attention in the media; they often only become relevant when there is a crisis situation like a flooding, extreme heat, or forest fire and seldom go beyond the crisis story. At the same time, media outlets and journalists indicate that climate change topics are too complex, technical or scientific, and therefore, not easy to translate into meaningful stories for larger audiences. With the recent release of the “Sixth Assessment Report - Climate Change 2021” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the urgency of improving independent, reliable, and accessible reporting on climate change is evident. The IPCC report again shows that climate change is a cross-border matter which can only be efficiently addressed when done collectively.

The “Climate Journalism Fellowships” provides individual (freelance) journalists engaged and trained through the Network of Networks the opportunity to acquire more knowledge and in-depth understanding about the way climate change impacts local communities (via e.g. rising temperatures, water scarcity, biodiversity, food security) and how to mitigate impact. The fellowship also provides journalistic mentoring and peer-to-peer coaching to ensure the use of more effective journalism formats, such as action- and solution-based journalism on reducing the impact of climate change and positive actions on climate change mitigation. Together, the fellowship modules ultimately ensure that more audiences (from local communities through decision makers) are reached, are aware about the impact and possible mitigation measures related to climate change and are equipped to take action. In addition, a journalism production grant for more experienced journalists will enable them to do more long-term and in-depth cross-border investigations on climate related issues affecting their region.

Public health as a topical strand addresses the discussion on health issues in a wide and holistic way. This encompasses much more than the goal of being healthy and refers to external living conditions such as climate and clean environment, social aspects such as poverty reduction, comprehensive access to the health system for all but also the factual and evidence-based discussion of medical findings and ways to counter disinformation. As such it touches almost all the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and as WHO underlines: “Public health is ultimately a political choice.”

With the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic and the fight against it, the topic of public health has once again gained in importance. The comprehensibility of political decisions - up to and including the temporary curtailment of freedoms - was closely linked to the level of information of citizens and the weighing of which measures can be acceptable to society as a whole.

Media and information literacy (MIL) is an important field of action to counteract social disintegration. Here the relevance of community media for addressing disadvantaged or marginalized citizens in the local environment is highly relevant as it is stressed in the Council of Europe report (2020) “Media Literacy for all”.

Based on this evidence, the present topical strand focusing on “A Media and Information Literacy Approach for Civic Empowerment in Public Health” will explore innovative and effective methods of engaging communities in pro-active and trust-worthy ways via their local community media. Following an initial period of research on good practices in MIL activities fostering engagement for public health issues by programme managers and local researchers in four workshop countries, local/community media from five European countries will be invited to respond to a limited grant procedure, where they commit themselves to integrate the MIL-public health practice in an existing or new editorial group, for longer-term effect. Grantees will will both take part in exchange workshops informed by our research and thereafter produce an agreed number of programmes.

A step-by-step E3J online learning resource on how to build effective public health programmes in community media is available on the JTI Campus.

This unique concept and the related tools are innovative as they tie more conventional offers of training, capacity building and networking to compliance with professional norms and ethics in a very practical way.

This activity is geared towards facilitating the integration of existing offers of the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) and the Collaborative and Investigative Journalism Initiative (CIJI) within Creative Europe, mainly focusing on tiers A) networks and C) individuals.

More specifically, this means a targeted offer for other networks or hubs of collaborative journalism to implement the JTI throughout and on behalf of their respective group of stakeholders. Subject to a thorough self-assessment, the need for additional features of transparency, methods and processes could then be addressed in a systematic way. This would include, but not be limited to the disclosure of funding, drafting and enforcement of editorial guidelines, complaints and correction policies, for example.

With this module in place, other initiatives could benefit in a sense that they would not have to draw up and implement editorial guidelines on their own, while participating journalists would receive the respective cover and certainty in engaging with one another. If used by several actors alike, such a module could also enhance interoperability in a sense that the groundwork of editorial policy has already been established and can be easily ported between stakeholders, projects and participants.

The already existing JTI web application, the jti:app and its forthcoming knowledge base, the JTI Campus, will be extended by a gateway for the tier C) target group of individual journalists. The main features would include, but not be limited to:

• Personal account and profile;
• Searchable database of participating and other initiatives;
• TrustPass [working title], an electronic record of JTI-compliant collaborative projects this person has already participated in, which can serve as an easier entry into new ventures;
• Advocacy for interchangeable personal profiles of individuals across participating actors, including a respective feasibility study with a special focus on data harmonization and security;
• Digital safety tutorials and protection, a segway to existing offers and materials regarding the individual protection against digital threats journalists are frequently confronted with.