Category: Trainers and panelists

Based in New York as the investigative projects editor at Reuters, Blake Morrison has overseen and edited three projects that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize: The Child Exchange, an investigation of America’s underground market for adopted children; The Echo Chamber, a special report that revealed how a handful of lawyers came to have an outsized influence in the U.S. Supreme Court; and Cheat Sheet, an investigation of how standardised tests used by universities  to determine whom to accept have been compromised by rampant and systematic cheating and other security failures. Projects he has overseen have also resulted in decades of jail time for individuals whose wrongdoing the Reuters investigations exposed. Prior to joining Reuters, Blake served as the investigations editor, deputy enterprise editor and investigative reporter at USA TODAY. His investigation of the impact of industrial pollution on schoolchildren spurred the U.S. government to launch a $2.25 million project to examine the air outside more than 60 schools across the nation. The reporting earned honours including the Grantham Prize, a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, the Fourth Estate Award, the America’s Promise Journalism Award, the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize, the John B. Oakes Award and the Philip Meyer Journalism Award. Before joining USA TODAY, Blake spent six years as a beat reporter, investigative reporter and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Let’s investigate: Sparking Curiosity and Creativity in Investigative Journalism:

This interactive presentation is designed to reignite our curiosity and creativity in the field of investigative journalism.

Generating Story Ideas, How to Investigate While Covering a Beat:

We will focus on how to generate compelling story ideas and conduct in-depth investigative work while covering a beat.

The Art of the Interview. Techniques, Strategies and Finding Your Own Style

This session will explore the techniques and strategies essential for conducting effective interviews. From developing a personal interviewing style to navigating difficult conversations.

Mastering the Pitch. Ways to Focus Your Story Ideas, Avoid Over-Promising and Imagine What Success Looks Like

Learning how to refine and focus your story ideas to create pitches that resonate with editors and audiences alike.

Refining Your Pitches: Applying Lessons from This Week:

Building on lessons learned throughout the week, this final session will guide participants in crafting a compelling pitch that captures the essence of the story.

AX Mina is part-time Program Director at The Self-Investigation. She is also a strategic consultant and leadership coach who’s supported news leaders and managers through programs with LION Publishers, The OpEd Project and the American Press Institute. She was a founding board member of the News Product Alliance and is a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications. She is a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher and lifelong mindfulness practitioner.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

How to Avoid Digital Overwhelm: Mental Health Workshop

This course will teach you how to manage the digital distractions that drain your focus and impact your wellbeing, offering practical tips for reducing stress, recognising the effects of multitasking, and protecting your sleep for better rest.

Stress Management to Become a Better Journalist: Mental Health Workshop

In this course, you’ll learn to identify stress signals and risk factors for burnout, manage your stress levels while maintaining your inner balance, and practice taking mindful pauses during a busy workday to support your mental health.

Optional Relaxing Session: Gentle Yoga and Mindfulness

This optional relaxing session will offer participants a soothing blend of gentle yoga and mindfulness practices designed to foster relaxation and mental clarity.

Ali Fegan is an investigative reporter at SVT. Since 2008 Fegan has worked mainly as a reporter but also as a producer, host and researcher at Scandinavia’s largest investigative TV-show “Uppdrag granskning/Mission investigate’’. For the last couple of years he has focused on and participated in various international collaborations with media such as The Guardian, Bellingcat, Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, an investigation of the UN, the Catholic Church, state corruption and human trafficking. In 2003 the hard-hitting investigation “Putin’s Shadow War’’ on Russian intelligence operations in the Nordic countries was published by the Nordic public service companies, including SVT.  Ali Fegan and his colleague Maria Georgieva took part as reporters. He has been nominated and won several national and international prizes such as Emmy 2019, IRE 2009 and 2019, Dig Awards 2016 and Prix Europa 2019.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Mission Investigate at Scandinavian Public Broadcasters

Ali Fegan and Maria Georgieva will join forces to deepen the understanding of how digging in databases combined with classic fieldwork can create ground-breaking and impactful investigative journalism.

Putin’s Shadow War: How Did We Do It

Ali Fegan and Maria Gerogieva will demonstrate how Nordic public service broadcasting effectively employs data and classic fieldwork by showcasing their Case study.

Apostolis Fotiadis covers EU policy issues including developments in population movement, security and defence, privacy and big data policies. In the past, he has cooperated with many international media outlets and organisations. He has authored numerous reports, published two books on EU migration and border control policies and has been a member of numerous cross-border investigations. He currently co-operates with BIRN and Solomon.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

After Publication: How to Strategically Roll Out Investigation With as Much Impact as Possible

Many investigative stories fail to reach their full impact post-publication due to various factors that, while not entirely controllable, can be strategically influenced. This session will identify these factors and entry points for enhancing impact, illustrated with examples from previous BIRN investigations.

Besar Likmeta is the editor in chief of BIRN Albania and its award-winning publication Reporter.al. For a long time Likmeta was Albanian correspondent for BIRN’s flagship publication BalkanInsight.com and has contributed to various international media, including The Christian Science Monitor, Global Post, Transitions Online, Foreign Policy, Washington Post and others.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Environmental and Sustainable Energy Investigative Journalism

This session will introduce journalists to BIRN Albania’s investigative techniques used to uncover a major corruption scandal involving the Minister of Environment and the Deputy Prime Minister, detailing the methods employed to expose fraud and money laundering in public-private partnership contracts for waste incinerators, including how leads were obtained, documents secured, sources interviewed, and narratives crafted.

Boris Budini is a Systems Architect at Cloud68.co, Co-founder of LibreLabs Albania, and dedicated advocate for digital rights and open access. Since 2015, he’s been a familiar face in hackerspaces in Tirana and Torino, collaborating with fellow activists to champion digital freedoms. As a core team member of CryptoParty Tirana organising team, Boris has played a pivotal role in creating an environment where cryptoparties could take place and security knowledge could be shared.

His expertise extends to digital infrastructure, where he specialises in building Linux-based systems to empower individuals and communities to take control against a BigTech owned web. As part of his open source journey, he has been engaged with various projects and communities such as Mozilla and Nextcloud.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

How do Tech & Journalism Intersect and What to Do With It

Boris Budini and Redon Skikuli will jointly explore how to extract more insights from publicly available open-source information online,  showcasing of powerful tools and practical skills for investigative journalism. From data analysis to online research, we will try to get some practical skills and resources that can be used daily.

Group session: Advanced Deep & Dark Web

In this session, Boris Budini and Redon Skikuli will explore safe navigation techniques for investigating stories on the deep and dark web, including advanced methods for secure payments and information analysis, with live demonstrations and hands-on experience.

Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian independent journalist. For 17 years she was a special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta, till the newspaper was shut down under the pressure of Russian authorities in March 2022. She reported on conflict, crime, human rights and social issues. Kostyuchenko was among the first to prove the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. She covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the second day of the war. Now she collaborates with the independent Russian exiled media Meduza.

Kostyuchenko’s book “I Love Russia”, named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and TIME, documents her country as experienced by those whom it aims to erase: girls from the provinces coerced into sex work, queer people, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian hospital under attack, and reporters like herself targeted by the abusive government. Her work was acknowledged with multiple awards including the European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Award-Free Press of Eastern Europe, and the Paul Klebnikov Prize.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

How to Report From a Lost Country

Session explores the unique challenges of reporting from authoritarian countries, including fieldwork strategies, source recruitment, safety, resisting government pressure, verifying information, and countering propaganda, using Russia as a case study.

An award-winning journalist and editor, currently focused on digital rights. Ivana specialises in topics such as investigating organised crime, misuse of public money, digital rights and the use and impact of AI.

In 2021, she completed the European Broadcasting Union’s media trainers program. She began her career at the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS) and later became Deputy Editor-in-Chief.

She has been a fact-checker at OCCRP since 2013 and an External Assessor at the International Fact-Checking Network since 2017. Her accolades include the European Press Prize, Anthony Lewis prize and the Balkan Fact-Checking Award.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Gender-based Violence Online: Reporting for Impact

Ivana Jeremic and Kreshnik Gashi will jointly enhance media reporting on online gender-based violence by using practical tools and experiences to promote ethical reporting, protect victims, and drive actions from social media platforms and governments. A series of impact gender-based violence stories will be presented as case studies.

Jakub Górnicki is a reporter and co-founder of Outriders, an award winning media publication combining art, journalism, and technology to create stories about global issues and events. Jakub covered the migration crisis in 2015, Belarusian protests in 2022 and war in Ukraine. He remains focused on migration and conflict. He is the winner of Paszporty Polityki, INMA Global Media Awards and European Press Prize nominee.

Previously, as a COO and board member of ePaństwo Foundation, he developed it into a leading open data/transparency NGO globally. Over six years he established Code for Poland and took it into Code for All together with Code for America Open Cities – a programme helping European cities adopt open data policies.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2024 Sessions

Visual Storytelling: What is There to Learn From Outriders?

Outriders team, Jakub Górnicki and Anna Gornicki, will provide participants with knowledge on mobile-first visual storytelling projects, including a mobile-first approach to design and content creation, showcasing five innovative projects that integrate mobile, 360, and illustrative journalism, explaining their construction, and discussing how teams manage cross-border technological projects and diverse methods to convey complex global stories.

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 visualisation 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 2024 Sessions

Data Journalism: Navigating the Challenges Posed by AI

Session dedicated to foundational understanding of tools and processes in data journalism: exploring data sources and visualisation techniques, and learning how to effectively navigate the challenges of data-driven storytelling, from spreadsheets to AI, while developing the skills to continue advancing.

AI Do’s and Don’ts

Explore how to responsibly use AI in modern, data-driven investigations by automating tasks like document sorting, information extraction, and transcription, while also understanding the limitations and ethical considerations to ensure balanced and accurate reporting.

Group sessions: Advanced Data Journalism

In this workshop on data analysis and cleaning with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python, Pandas, and Jupyter notebooks to efficiently process and analyse large datasets, create reproducible workflows, and uncover hidden stories, transforming your data journalism capabilities beyond the limits of Excel and Google Sheets. Learn to extract and transform hidden web data into structured datasets, covering techniques like pulling data tables, extracting articles, automating downloads, and setting up scrapers for continuous data collection using Python.