SummBirn – BIRN Summer School

BIRN Summer School 2026 – Final Day. From Heatwaves to Public Spending: How Journalists Can Find and Investigate Environmental Stories and Pitch Investigations

The final day of the BIRN Summer School 2026 featured several sessions on environmental investigative journalism. Afterwards, participants presented their story pitches to a jury. The strongest ideas will receive funding for further development.

by Marija Vasilevska

“How to Identify Strong Environmental Stories in Local Communities?” was the opening panel discussion on the final day of the BIRN Summer School in Ohrid. Journalists Katerina Topalova from North Macedonia, Dragan Gmizic from Serbia and Wojciech Oleksiak from Poland shared their experiences in identifying and developing local environmental issues into strong investigative stories. BIRN’s Gordana Andric acted as moderator.

The discussion explored the first signals and “red flags” that can indicate a story worth investigating, before looking at how to assess roader public interest. The panelists explained where journalists could find promising leads. Sources ranged from communities, activists and local media to inspection reports and environmental permits. Public procurement, court proceedings and company activities also featured.

The speakers discussed how journalists can look beyond environmental issues to broader concerns. These include institutional and corporate responsibility, financial interests and corruption. The panelists also highlighted conflicts of interest, weak enforcement and the misuse of public resources. They emphasized the importance of verifying information from local communities through documents, data, expert sources and field reporting.

Another talking point was the potential for seemingly small local issues to reveal wider systemic problems, and develop into national, regional or cross-border investigations. Drawing on examples from their own work, the speakers also reflected on common challenges. These included limited access to information and data, relations with local authorities and companies, and difficulties in finding independent experts.

The day continued with Diego Arguedas Ortiz, a journalist, editor and media trainer specialising in climate change and climate journalism. His experience includes working with Oxford University’s Reuters Institute, the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. From 2022 to 2025, he was Associate Director of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, where he led training programmes for hundreds of journalists and editors.

Diego led two sessions focused on strengthening environmental investigations. “Looking Under the Hood: Where Is the Money Going?” explored how journalists can follow financial flows behind environmental and climate issues. “How to Cover Heat: Ideas, Principles and Examples of Good Investigations” followed, offering practical approaches and examples for investigating the growing impact of extreme heat.

Blake Morrison, Gordana Andric, Sasa Dragojlo and Besar Likmeta worked with all 30 participants to help them turn their story ideas into strong and well-developed pitches. Drawing on the skills and knowledge gained throughout the Summer School, participants refined their ideas and presented their final pitches one by one to a jury for evaluation.

The day concluded with all participants receiving certificates marking their successful completion of the BIRN Summer School 2026.

BIRN Summer School 2026 – Day 5: Legal Risks, Geolocation, FOI, Visual Investigation, Environmental Journalism

Legal pressures, geolocation and visual investigation were on the agenda on the fifth day of BIRN Summer School. The experts’ topics also included Freedom of Investigation requests and environmental reporting.

by Aleksandra Vrbica

The fifth day of the BIRN Summer School in Ohrid opened with Bojana Paneva, Senior Associate from Karanovic & Partners Commercial Law Firm. She spoke to participants about reporting under legal pressure, with confidentiality one of her concerns.

“Confidential sources are frequently indispensable to investigative journalism. Individuals with knowledge of corruption, institutional misconduct or corporate wrongdoing may be willing to speak only if their identity is protected. Macedonian law recognises this directly,” stated Paneva.

She also explained the legal measures for protecting journalists and shared several cases from her experience.

After Paneva, Balkan Insight journalist Azem Kurtic held a session on geolocation and visual investigation.

Kurtic presented a case study in which the location was detected based on a single photo. It followed the conviction of a Bosnian-born woman at a court in the Danish city of Odense, as detailed in the “Black Swan” documentary. She was found guilty of fraud and attempted fraud amounting to 1.8 million Danish kroner, receiving a three-month prison sentence, with an additional 15 months suspended.

“She declared bankruptcy, but journalists suspected that she moved some of her money back to Bosnia. Thanks to one photo, we found her villa in the country. It was a shadow, a swimming pool and a mountain view that gave it away,” said Kurtic.

The participants did an exercise based on Kurtic’s investigation on the criminal group from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They analysed every relevant detail from a photo of these people, using Google Street View and social media to determine the exact location and venue in Dubai where the photo it was taken.

BIRN Macedonia Director Ana Petruseva held a session on Freedom of Information (FOI) and how journalists can use it to strengthen their investigative reporting. Through real-life BIRN Macedonia examples, Petruseva explained why access to public information is important.

“These are just some basic rules – when to file a request: when other approaches and attempts haven’t worked, when you believe that it is the only way to get the information and when you deliberately want to exercise your right to it,” she said.

Petruseva explained where FOI requests should be filed and what to ask, as well as giving exceptions. Petruseva also addressed the importance of timing.

“In 2016, there were elections in Macedonia, and in 2017, a turmoil followed, which led to the attack on the Parliament. We were aware that the change of government was coming. Knowing that, we filed requests to several ministries at the same time for the documents that showed all the representative costs, which included buying suits, paying dinners, and some bizarre costs. That way, we were able to gain all this information from the new government,” explained Petruseva.

BIRN Albania’s Editor in Chief Besar Likmeta introduced the “Flamingo Revolution” to participants and explained the importance of environmental journalism in the middle of a protest. He explained how the reporting started on Jared Kushner’s controversial plans for coastal resort developments at Zvernec and Sazan Island.

“What we knew when we started investigating this topic? The land was disputed, there was a very sensitive, protected area, and the government wasn’t telling us what it was doing,” said Likmeta.

In this case, one story became five.

“We had a story about the environment. Than we had a story on property and who owns the contested land. We had the business investigation on who stands behind the development. We also had the investigation on government and who authorised the project, and what happens when citizens challenge the project, and what role does the organized crime play. And with Kushner’s role, this became an international topic,” Likmeta explained, adding that online activity also became important.

“Because of many trolls on social media, the information war came with the protest,” he concluded.

The fifth day wrapped up with a session on climate investigations, led by climate journalist and media trainer Diego Arguedas Ortiz.

“Why to report on fossil fuels? For the first time, we have the electricity that is produced more from the renewals, than from the coal, but it’s not fast enough because we need more energy every year”, he told participants.

Ortiz presented several resources journalists could use in their reporting.

“A few tools to understand where are the fossil companies and projects are Carbon Majors, Global Coal Exit List, Coal data from Global Energy Monitor,” he noted, illustrating how these tools could be used, as well as the benefits of geo-spatial mapping.

He also stressed energy and mining companies’ impact on nature and communities, noting that banks, law firms and PR agencies are among the enablers of their projects.

Sharbil Nammour

Media Safety Advisor – Vallaris Solutions
Partner / Chief Legal and Risk Officer – Merrill Herzog Inc.

Sharbil Nammour is a security and risk management specialist, with deep expertise in both physical and digital threat mitigation. From Kabul to Kyiv, he develops and leads comprehensive risk solutions for international news organizations and journalists: training, crisis response, and hostile environment operations.

A Peabody Award recipient, Emmy nominee, and New York Bar attorney, his work integrates proactive digital threat modeling, physical security and safety into pragmatic solutions that safeguard reporters. He is also a partner and responder at Merrill Herzog, a global crisis response firm specializing in evacuation, kidnapping, and other complex incidents.

Sharbil holds dual common/civil law degrees, alongside advanced certifications in pre-hospital trauma care and mental health first aid.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Digital Security in the Real World

Your digital attack surface is larger than you think – this session helps participants acknowledge their online vulnerabilities and take pragmatic mitigations.

An interactive examination of how day-to-day device management, communications and typical online behaviour expose journalists, colleagues and confidential sources. Participants will identify their own digital blindspots, workshop realistic protections, and identify unsolvable risks.

Scenario Based Exercises & Live Problem Solving

A dynamic, scenario-driven session placing participants inside an escalating situation where they will be required to assess threats, make difficult decisions, adapt their plans and manage the emotional consequences of working with multiple stressors. The session will focus on situational awareness and de-escalation, and also include a “mini-med” segment on treating the most common critical field injuries.

Reade Levinson

Visual Investigations Reporter
Reuters News

Reade Levinson is a visual investigations reporter for Reuters, based in London. She was part of a team that was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for a series that revealed secrets behind the Nigerian military’s long campaign to crush the nation’s Islamist insurgency. She has also written about the weapons flow into Sudan, a massacre in Burkina Faso, stolen Ukrainian grain, the wealth of Burmese generals and the international trade in human body parts. Previously, she reported on U.S. immigration and policing from New York. Her work with her Reuters colleagues has received several awards, including a Selden Ring Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, a Scripps Howard Award and an Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics, among others.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Masterclass in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): Part 1

The master classes in the Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) aim to present essential open-source intelligence (OSINT) skills, including geolocation and using satellite imagery for investigations, through hands-on training, practical exercises and real-world case studies.

Whether you’re new to OSINT or looking to sharpen existing skills, this two-part will equip you with essential tools and techniques to strengthen your research and reporting. Part one covers advanced search techniques, geolocation, image analysis, and satellite imagery tools for tracking and investigating events.

Masterclass in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): Part 2

Part two builds on those skills with plane and ship tracking, disinformation identification, and deeper dives into satellite imagery analysis and geolocation. The goal is that by the end of both sessions, you will feel comfortable applying OSINT techniques in your everyday reporting to verify information and deepen your investigations.

Karla Junicic

Engaged Citizens Reporting – Programme Coordinator
BIRN

Karla is a journalist and project coordinator specialising in engaged citizens reporting and international affairs reporting. Before joining the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), she wrote for Jutarnji list, Euractiv, and Globus in Croatia, and served as a correspondent from the United Kingdom. At BIRN, she coordinates, mentors, and trains journalists in investigative reporting methods that place citizens at the centre as primary sources, and leads the development of a technical tool BIRN has built to engage citizens in the reporting process.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Engaged Citizens Reporting (ECR)

Audiences are increasingly dispersed and less actively engaged in supporting journalism’s core purpose of revealing and reporting facts. Engaged citizen reporting offers a way forward by revealing underreported: citizens can become active participants in investigations, surfacing facts, pointing journalists toward where abuse or misconduct is happening, and providing evidence to support reporting. Through engaged citizen reporting, BIRN has produced some of its most important investigations on issues related to online abuse, environmental damage, gender-based discrimination and many more.

In collaboration with Ana Petruševa, director of BIRN Macedonia, this session will show how to launch an audience-engaged project and what to consider along the way — from crowdsourcing evidence, preparing effective callouts to fact-checking and analysis and shaping storytelling. It will also address how to keep citizens engaged throughout the process, and why involving them ultimately builds greater trust and connection with your journalism.

Jonathan Soma

Professor in Data Journalism
Columbia University Journalism School

Jonathan Soma is Knight Chair in Data Journalism at Columbia University, where he is director of both the Data Journalism MS and the summer intensive Lede Program. He lectures at Columbia on everything from basic Python and data analysis to interactive visualization and machine learning. As an educator, programmer, and designer, he focuses on making unapproachable concepts accessible, and has worked with ProPublica, The New York Times, and others.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

AI in Investigative Journalism: Transforming Newsrooms, Data and Document-Based Investigation

Data journalism is a wide field, covering everything from visualization to the modern usage of AI. In this session, we will examine various data sources and tools that allow journalists to analyse and visualize data in all its forms, including spreadsheets, maps, and text documents. Since each data-driven story presents its own challenges and demands specific approaches, we’ll also see how to use AI to multiply your skills tenfold.

Advanced Data Journalism (Session 1): Data analysis and cleaning with AI and Python

Python is the ideal tool for data analysis when you’ve outgrown Excel and Google Sheets. In this workshop, we’ll explore how Python – with the helpful suggestions of an AI mentor – can transform your data journalism workflow.

We’ll learn to create reproducible, easy-to-understand “notebooks” that are powerful yet simple to share and review. You’ll discover how to open various data formats – CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, and web-scraped data – and master techniques to clean and convert them into analyzable formats.

By the end of this session, you’ll have the skills to handle larger datasets, conduct more complex analyses, and uncover stories that might otherwise remain hidden in the data. This workshop will empower you to take your data journalism to the next level, opening up new possibilities for insightful reporting.

Advanced Data Journalism (Session 2): An introduction to scraping and unstructured data

Much of the world’s most interesting information hides in plain sight on websites, inaccessible to simple downloads. Web scraping offers a powerful solution, automatically extracting this data and transforming it into structured, usable datasets.

In this workshop, you’ll learn to harness web scraping for journalism, covering techniques like pulling data tables directly into Python, extracting news articles and search results, downloading hundreds of PDFs, and automatically clicking “next page” again and again.

We’ll also explore advanced scenarios, such as collecting social media posts and setting up automated scrapers for regular data updates – daily, weekly, or even hourly. By the end of this session, you’ll have the skills to significantly enhance the reach of your investigations.

AI in Investigative Journalism: Transforming Newsrooms, Data and Document-Based Investigation

While every corner of the newsroom is buzzing with the possibilities of AI, it holds special potential for investigative journalists. We’ll look at:

– Automatically sorting and categorizing documents

– Extracting key information from texts

– Transcribing interviews privately and accurately

– Leveraging it to learn new skills

But for every benefit of AI, there’s always a potential pitfall. To ensure we are reporting responsibly, we’ll also examine how these tools are created and how they work, which will help us know when to set them aside in favour of traditional journalism and manual review.

Jeta Xharra

Country Director, Editor-in-Chief
BIRN

Jeta Xharra is a renowned journalist in Kosovo and the Balkans.

Since 2005, she has been the Country Director of the BIRN office in Kosovo and the editor-in-chief of Kosovo’s most-watched current affairs TV programme, Life in Kosovo.

Xharra first got into journalism by working as a fixer/local producer for BBC News and Channel 4 in 1998 and later became Manager of the BBC Kosovo Bureau. In 1999, she worked for BBC News in Albania and Macedonia.

She graduated with an MA in War Studies from King’s College London (2000) and an MA with Distinction in Screenwriting from the London College of Printing (2002).

She has published a front-page article in The Independent and other articles in The Economist, Sunday Telegraph and Jane’s Intelligence Review. While in the UK, Xharra worked for the Foreign News Planning Desk at the BBC World Service.

In 2003, Xharra became Project Director for the IWPR Kosovo office, where she made an impact with her vigilant and challenging moderation of popular current affairs programmes broadcast on the main Kosovo TV channels, RTK and KTV.

Under Xharra’s supervision, Kosovo was the first office in the IWPR Balkan project to develop a three-month journalism training programme, which attracted over 200 people for 20 places.

Warless, a play that Xharra wrote in English, was chosen as one of the 10 best plays among 550 that competed in the Young Writers Festival at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where it had a public reading on December 10 2004.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

The Editor’s Eye: Turning a Good Idea into a Strong Investigation

This session will give participants an inside look at how some of BIRN’s strongest investigations were developed, researched and turned into published stories. Through a moderated discussion with experienced BIRN journalists, participants will explore the editorial choices, challenges and investigative approaches behind a selection of notable BIRN investigations.

From Exposure to Impact: Why Some Investigations Spark Change and Others Don’t

This session will explore the key factors that determine whether investigative stories lead to real-world change, examining case studies, strategies for maximizing impact, and the role of timing, storytelling, and stakeholder engagement.

Felicia Crețu

Editorial fact-checker
Columbia University SENS Media Project

Felicia Crețu is an editorial fact-checker, based in Moldova. She is working for CU SENS Media Project, an independent media organisation from the Republic of Moldova specializing in video investigations. Previously, she has been an investigative journalist for several years. Her reporting was recognised both locally and internationally.

In 2022, her story exposing the hideout of Ilan Shor – a sanctioned Kremlin proxy and Moldova’s most-wanted fugitive, found at a luxury villa in Israel – placed second in Investigative Journalism at Romania’s leading journalism award.

She was named ” Journalist of the Year ” twice, in 2020 and 2022, in Moldova.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Fact-Checking – hate the process, love the reputation. A survival guide to solid evidence

This 1,5-hour training introduces the core principles and practical workflow of fact-checking in journalism. Participants will learn the standards of evidence and source verification needed to get an investigation past editorial fact-checking, which helps prevent legal risks and protects the outlet’s credibility with readers, with an emphasis on:

understanding why fact-checking, in which every single statement in a piece is checked word by word against its primary source, matters and what line-by-line fact-checking means (the OCCRP standard),
applying the “primary source only” rule when checking names, numbers, quotes, addresses, dates, descriptions, and background claims,
documenting evidence properly through detailed footnotes and screenshots, and
recognizing when a second independent source is needed to back up a claim.

In the practical part, participants will be given a sentence taken from a real investigation done by our organization, along with the actual evidence collected for it. They will be asked whether they think the evidence is sufficient to support the sentence as written and encouraged to propose a safer, more accurate reformulation, one that states only what the evidence actually proves.

The session will end with insight into the editorial hierarchy – reporter, editor, and fact-checker and clarifying who has the final say over content versus the final say over accuracy.

Gordana Andric

Investigations Editor
Balkan Insight

Gordana Andric is Belgrade based journalist and editor. She first joined BIRN as a journalist in 2010 and later worked as a managing editor of BIRN’s English language website Balkan Insight. After spending four years with BBC World Service’s Belgrade bureau, she now works as investigations editor with Balkan Insight and executive editor with BIRN Serbia. Andric has managed the teams of journalists, investigative reporters and editors from more than ten countries across the Balkans and Black Sea region.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Turning a raw topic to a submission-ready pitch

The session will guide participant through the steps of developing a story idea into their article proposal. We will discuss the idea’s sources and newsworthiness, how to move from a broad topic to provable angle, what are the key elements every pitch needs and why all this matters.

The session will end with insight into the editorial hierarchy – reporter, editor, and fact-checker and clarifying who has the final say over content versus the final say over accuracy.

Diego Arguedas Ortiz

Climate Journalist and Media Trainer

Diego Arguedas Ortiz is a journalist, editor and media trainer specialised in climate change.

As a trainer, he has taught over 3,500 participants in climate journalism programmes. He served as the Associate Director at the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (2022-2025), a programme at Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. He has also led training programmes at the Global Investigative Journalism Network (2026) and the University of Costa Rica (2016-2021), among others. His journalism has appeared at BBC Future, MIT Tech Review and The Observer and includes coverage of four UN Climate Conferences, the Panama Papers international collaboration and being the founding editor (2015-2019) of Ojo al Clima, Central America’s first climate news outlet.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Fossil fuels, food systems and pledges: a primer to climate investigations

This session will introduce participants to three of the most important topics of climate investigative journalism: the fossil fuel industry, the climate impact of food systems and how to cover national and government pledges. It will cover dozens of resources that will cover how to get access to relevant data and how to process it, where to find investigation angles and case studies that showcase those approaches.

Looking under the hood: where is the money going?

In 2021, Shell made a bold statement: it was going to move towards net zero by 2050 and would start increasing its investment in Renewables and Energy Solutions. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a changed political landscape have shifted the company’s priorities, and it has dropped or changed targets. This short hands-on session will build on an existing 2023 investigation by Global Witness and apply lessons to Shell’s latest practices.

Participants are encouraged to review these short stories from 2021 and 2024 ahead of the session.

How to cover heat: Ideas, principles and examples of good investigations

Every summer and every year, temperature records are broken globally. Heat is becoming a major issue for business, politics and sports, and getting more and more attention from audiences and newsrooms. This session will take an investigative angle on heat, focusing on two core principles: the role of reporters unveiling hidden impacts, and our role in keeping governments and companies accountable for the safety of citizens. The session will feature case studies from health and climate reporters investigating heat.

About audiences: what psychology and media research tell us about them

Climate journalism (and reporters doing climate investigations) can learn from psychologists and behavioural scientists about how our audiences will react to information and ideas, particularly those in climate science and policy that can challenge views. This session will start with an overview of some key concepts of climate behavioural science and audience research, and then will collectively build an approach to make climate investigations more approachable for audiences.