Author: Aleksandra Vrbica

The 14th annual BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting closed on August 24 with participants from Central and Southeastern Europe, Ukraine, Georgia and Uzbekistan pitching investigative story ideas to BIRN editors.

A total of 19 pitches were submitted, focussing mainly on cross-border issues. BIRN editors will select the best for funding, editorial support and mentoring.

Blake Morrison, the Summer School’s lead trainer and investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, said it was “exciting to hear the ideas and to see the collaboration of journalists from different newsrooms in different countries”.

“They’ve worked hard all week to develop powerful proposals for investigations, and I expect some great journalism as a result,” he said.

The topics included environmental neglect, organised crime and corruption and reproductive rights.

On Friday, the final day of training, participants heard from BIRN Albania editor-in-chief Besar Likmeta about ways of covering environmental issues, while BIRN investigations editor Apostolis Fotiadis talked about how to secure the best possible impact.

Over the week-long course in Mlini, on the Croatian coast, some 35 participating journalists heard from 15 trainers on a range of issues relevant to investigative journalism, from digital security to artificial intelligence, visual storytelling to covering war crimes, as well as how to best protect their mental health while on the job.

BIRN’s regional director, Milka Domanovic, thanked all the participants for their hard work and expressed her hope that they will continue collaborating “even after the school ends”.

“The Summer School is not only about polishing and learning new skills, but it is also about establishing long-lasting professional connections.”

More information about the lectures and panels can be found here: https://birnsummerschool.org/

The penultimate day of teaching at BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting focussed on pitching and visual storytelling, after picking up Wednesday’s thread of mental wellbeing and advanced data journalism.

Jakub Gornicki, reporter and co-founder of visual storytelling platform Outriders, explained to the participants the process involved in creating engaging stories.

“Journalism does not have to be boring, so we combine art and reporting skills to explain global issues,” he said, while discussing some of the platform’s work in Ukraine and other places.

Visual storytelling can offer a “new angle on already known events”, he said. “We usually post three months after something happened.”

The participants had the chance to build on Wednesday’s discussions concerning data scraping from open sources and how to use artificial intelligence for elementary coding.

Blake Morrison, lead trainer and investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, led a session on pitching stories. Journalists should not necessarily see themselves as “salesmen”, he said, but “selling the story is like selling yourself”.

“We need to anticipate that your editors will be sceptical, and that they will ask questions,” he said, so journalists should expect to be queried and to offer answers.

The day ended with a workshop on stress management led by A.X. Mino, a programme director at the Self Investigation network, a global non-profit that promotes healthy work culture in the media and communication industries.

Friday will be the last day of workshops before participants get to pitch their story ideas on Saturday.

One result of BIRN’s 14th Summer School of Investigative Reporting may be more cross-border cooperation between journalists from Uzbekistan and the Balkans.

Among the more than 30 participating reporters are Anastasia Galimova and Yuriy Park, thanks to a partnership between BIRN and the Network for Border Crossing Journalism, N-ost, and its Spheres of Influence Uncovered project bringing together journalists from seven countries across Eurasia in covering the impact of international economic cooperation.

“After the lectures, I got even more inspiration to work and investigate,” Galimova said on Day Four of the week-long course in Mlini, near Dubrovnik on Croatia’s Adriatic coast.

“Also it is a good experience to meet many colleagues from different countries because most of the time I work remotely and online. It is a great opportunity for me to talk with so many investigative journalists and hear their experiences and to know what is happening in different parts of the world.”

One notable difference the Uzbek journalists noticed was the level of transparency in other countries.

“We heard during the BIRN summer school that, for example, when a journalist in Sweden asks for some documents, the government gives it to them,” said Park. “It is much harder to get that kind of document in our country. Another problem is the safety of journalists.”

Park said he had been “inspired” by a talk by Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenk0 as well as lead trainer Blake Morrison and, from Sweden, the investigative journalists Ali Fegan and Maria Georgieva.

“I see how they treat their job and how it is done on a very high level,” Park said.

Every year, participants in the Summer School have the opportunity to work on investigative, cross-border stories with the support of experienced BIRN editors.

Park and Galimova said they already had some ideas.

“We have already talked with some of our colleagues and shared some ideas,” Galimova told BIRN. “For me, it is crucial to find collaboration outside of the Central Asia region. We have seen here that we have a lot of topics similar to those of the Balkan countries, for example, Chinese investments. We’ve talked with our colleagues and we have found the same patterns.”

Park said he was new to cross-border collaboration.

“We didn’t have any cooperation with colleagues from the Balkans, but as we are developing our ideas we are seeing some connection between Uzbekistan and Balkan and we want to explore it,” he said. “There are many issues that we can only cover through cross-border cooperation so it is a great opportunity and we are looking forward to doing that.”

Day Three of BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting began on Wednesday with a session dedicated to the secrets of a good interview before considering the benefits of new technologies and the challenge of protecting mental health.

Authenticity, preparation and “knowing your subject” are key to conducting a good interview, lead trainer and Reuters investigative projects editor Blake Morrison told the more than 30 participants in Mlini, Croatia.

“These people don’t know us, and we have to maintain a certain level of distance from them, we can’t be their friends,” he said. “Sometimes we have to convince them that they want to be interviewed by us.”

BIRN’s 14th Summer School brings together journalists from across Central and Eastern Europe for a week of insight and advice from 15 trainers.

Drawing on years of personal experience, Morrison urged the participants to think about “what makes your friends tell you their secrets” and to approach every interview as if they are interviewing themselves. He stressed the need for “confidence, honesty, curiosity and genuine interest in the people and topic”.

Digital infrastructure experts Boris Budini and Redon Skikuli of CryptoParty Tirana continued the day with a workshop looking at the benefits of technology in journalism.

“The intersection of technology and journalism helps us to protect ourselves and our sources, but also to use available tech to do our research and expose abuse of power,” Budini said.

The tech duo treated the participants to a list of tips and tricks in navigating open source intelligence, advanced use of search engines and the filtering of data.

The day continued with parallel group sessions on advanced data journalism, digital security and how to search the dark web. The day ended with workshops on mental health.

The second day of BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting in Mlini, Croatia on Tuesday started with a session on investigations at the Scandinavian Broadcast Service.

Journalists with the Swedish public broadcaster, Maria Georgieva and Ali Fegan, shared details about a TV programme focusing on investigative journalism called Mission Investigate and how they create the story from start to finish.

Georgieva said that when forming the idea “it is all about asking the right questions in the beginning”.

The Scandinavian team broadcasts around 35 investigations each year. They said they receive “30,000-40,000 emails with tips and ideas” each year, of which almost all are processed by the team.

“We are still one of the few PBS services that have a landline which you can call,” Fegan said.

Fegan and Georgieva shared details on the story selection process, how to “bulletproof” the idea, and how to make sure that the story is completed.

“Most of the stories we do are reporter-driven, which means that they first of all have to have a ‘spark’ for the story. Then we have the demand of the audience, and the rest is what we as a group decide deserves to be investigated,” Fegan added.

Lead trainer Blake Morrison, investigative projects editor with Reuters in New York, continued the day with a session on generating story ideas and how to investigate specific topics and areas.

As Morrsion said that “generating ideas is the hardest”, before explaining his process of finding a good story, sharing tips and tricks from his fruitful career.

“Consider how to integrate these tips into your work schedule,” he said, adding that one of the most important steps is to gain an editor’s support in writing the story, but also their encouragement to help you succeed with the story.

“You need to be your best advocate by developing greater expertise in your beat and by changing your line of sight to look for bigger, more impactful stories. This will make you indispensable,” Morrison added.

Professor in data journalism at Columbia University Journalism School, Jonathan Soma, gave a workshop on how to navigate the challenges of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools in journalism. Soma warned many AI tools had what he called “a three percent hallucination rate” whereby they make up or construct a certain amount of content, even when working with predetermined text or documents.

Soma’s session also looked at large language models, or LLMs. He said they “are flawed at everything they do, and it’s only by a strange, strange accident that we find them to be useful.”

Soma emphasised that AI tools can and should be used, “but only for error-resilient tasks.”

Georgieva and Fegan ended the day by sharing their personal experiences in running months-long cross-border investigations, sharing tips and tricks on how to approach such a task.