Author: SummBirn

BIRN’s 12th Annual Summer School Starts in Slovenia

For the 12th time, BIRN’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting is bringing together 30 journalists from South-East and Central European countries for a week-long training programme to develop skills, explore new techniques and start cross-border cooperations.

This year’s Summer School of Investigative Reporting started on Monday in the Slovenian town of Portoroz.

During the week-long programme, journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Finland and Ukraine will learn new skills and techniques and work on investigative stories.

The head of Regional Operations at BIRN, Dusica Stilic, welcomed the participants selected from a record-breaking number of applications – 180 this year.

“We are very proud to have this extraordinary group of people eager to learn to become the best version of an investigative journalist they possibly can be,” Stilic said.

Ivana Nikolic, leading the Investigative Reporting Initiative Programme at BIRN, presented the agenda and encouraged the participants to work towards pitching powerful stories.

“This week, you will learn a lot about innovative journalism techniques and skills from award-winning journalists and editors,” Nikolic said, adding that for the first time this year, participants will have the opportunity to learn how to stay safe online while working on their investigations.

Freelance coder and data specialist Friedrich Lindenberg gave an introduction to open data for investigations. Lindenberg has been working with investigative journalists and anti-corruption activists for the past decade and has built data-driven tools that support their work.

Lindenberg gave practical advice on effectively searching and cross-referencing open databases and using various tools to track documents.

“It’s important to remember that a search doesn’t make any document or information reliable and doesn’t take away the journalist’s responsibility,” he told the participants.

The first day ended with the journalists sharing ideas and starting to work on pitching cross-border investigative stories.

Kai Biermann

Kai Biermann is the editor of the investigative department at Die Zeit.

He studied psychology but has long been a journalist, author, blogger and editor in the investigative department in Zeit and Zeit Online.

His work is primarily focused on IT security and surveillance. He also writes about terrorism, the secret services and police work.

Biermann received two Grimme Online Awards in 2011 for his blog and the work on the interactive graphic Verräterisches Handy.

In 2016, with a team from Zeit Online and Zeit, he got the Reporter Prize for investigations into the perpetrators who set refugee homes on fire. As a member of an international team of reporters documenting the worldwide abuse of NSO’s Pegasus spy program, he won several international awards.

Biermann is the author of several non-fiction books. With Thomas Wiegold, he co-authored ‘Drones – Opportunities and Dangers of a New Technology’.

Friedrich Lindenberg

Friedrich Lindenberg is a coder and data journalist working on web technology for new narrative and investigative techniques.

He’s currently building OpenSanctions, a global database of persons of journalistic interest.

Previously, Lindenberg led the data team at OCCRP. He was responsible for the development of OCCRP Aleph and also supported ongoing investigations where data analysis was needed. In 2014/2015, he was a Knight International journalism fellow with the International Center for Journalists, working with the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), and in 2013 he was a Knight-Mozilla Open News fellow at Spiegel Online in Hamburg. Prior to that, Friedrich Lindenberg was an open data activist, and worked to promote the release of government information about public finance, lobbying, procurement and law making across the world.

Ahmad Al-Bazz

Ahmad Al-Bazz is a Palestine-based independent journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on Palestinian-Israeli affairs.

His work appears in several media outlets such as +972 Magazine, Mondoweiss, and UltraSawt. Since 2012, he has been a member of the Activestills photography collective, which operates in Palestine/Israel.

In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award. Between 2015-2019, two of his short documentaries received several regional and international awards, such as the Al-Jazeera Documentary Channel Award for Best Arab Short Doc (2015) and the Alexandria Short Film Festival Award (2019).

Ahmad holds a BA degree in Journalism from An-Najah National University in Palestine and an MA in Television Studies from the University of East Anglia in England.

Lina Kushch

Lina Kushch is a journalist, media expert, and media trainer with more than 25 years of experience.

Throughout her career, Lina has contributed to Reuters and the BBC and was also the head of the regional correspondents’ department in the all Ukrainian newspaper Golos Ukrainy till 2018.

She is also an expert in covering armed conflicts and migration issues. Until
2014 she lived and worked in Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine, and had to leave her
home after the city had been occupied by pro-Russia forces.

As the First Secretary of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine since 2018, she coordinates the work of 24 regional offices with 18,000 members. From the first days of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the union has launched several Journalists’ Solidarity Centers in Western Ukraine with the support of international partners.

As a member of the Commission on Journalistic Ethics (Ukraine), she is also a co-author of several journalistic ethics and journalistic practice publications.

Milica Stojanovic

Milica Stojanovic is a journalist for BIRN's Balkan Insight and Balkan Transitional Justice. She also regularly holds digital security training for local journalists in Serbia.

Before joining BIRN, Milica worked, for five years, at the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS), where she covered topics such as the judiciary, energy and public spending. Prior to CINS, Milica worked as a journalist and the daily/weekend editor at the online news portal Telegraf.rs.

As a member of CINS team, she won the 2017 European Press Prize for investigative journalism. She got an annual award for investigative journalism in 2015 from the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia. She holds seven domestic and international awards in total, alone or as a member of CINS team, for stories about the judiciary, corruption, or the environment.

Milica has MA in Journalism from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade. She speaks Serbian and English.

Claudia Ciobanu

Based in Warsaw, Claudia is a Balkan Insight correspondent reporting on political and social developments in Poland.

Claudia has been a journalist for a decade, starting out at the Romanian national daily, Cotidianul, before moving to cover Central and Eastern Europe as a freelancer for various international outlets. Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, Reuters and Al Jazeera. She is particularly interested in social movements, frontline communities and illiberal regimes.

Claudia won the first prize in the 2018 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic excellence. She was a finalist in the Reporting Europe and One World Media awards.

She has MA in Political Science from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

Sarah Cahlan

Sarah Cahlan is a video reporter for The Washington Post’s Visual Forensics team.

Before coming to The Post, she directed a short documentary about the historical inaccuracies of gender roles. As an NBC/NAHJ fellow, she reported, produced and wrote stories about science, tech and Latino culture. Cahlan has also covered health and the environment in California. 

Honors and Awards: 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service; 2021 Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Award; 2020 Webby Award for Best Individual Feature ; 2020 Online Journalism Award Features finalist; 2020 International Fact Checking Network for Best Format; 2019 North Gate Award for Excellence in Documentary Production; 2018 National Association of Black Journalists, Salute to Excellence; 2018 Excellence Award, Robert Whittington Award for Exceptional Reporting

Professional Affiliations: National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Simon Bowers

Simon Bowers is the investigations editor at the Finance Uncovered.

Simon Bowers is based in London. He joined Finance Uncovered in November 2020 after four years as European Co-Ordinator at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Before that he spent 19 years at The Guardian in the UK, where he was a senior reporter working on tax and financial investigations. Simon’s reporting has featured in some of the world’s most prestigious news media.

He has also given a TEDx talk on a collaborative investigation into Nike’s pan-European tax avoidance activities. He has been part of collaborative reporting teams that have won several awards, including three George Polk awards for Financial Journalism (Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, LuxLeaks) and a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting (Panama Papers).

Alexandra Heal

Alexandra Heal is a reporter in the Visual Storytelling Team, an interdisciplinary group of journalists combining data, design, coding and reporting skills.

The team focuses on projects where visual elements play an essential role in communicating the story, working on everything from investigations to explainers across the spectrum of news and features. Alexandra was previously a reporter at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where she won the Private Eye Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism for her series on domestic abuse by police officers and also reported on Brazilian deforestation for soya and beef in collaboration with Reporter Brasil and The Guardian.