The Summer School’s 29 participants divided into nine groups and presented ideas for investigations on which they would like to work.
The participants proposed investigations into female reproductive rights, air quality, the road industry, Balkan countries’ relations with Turkey and Hungary, illegal trading, smear campaigns and police dealings with private companies.
Each group gave a presentation of the outline of their proposed investigation and answered questions about the scale of their story, why it is important and what impact they expect.
The best three story ideas are being chosen by a jury composed of Reuters investigative editor and Summer School lead trainer Blake Morrison, BIRN’s Regional Director Marija Ristic and Investigative Editor Lawrence Marzouk, and the Executive Producer Podcasting for E.W Scripps national bureau, Susanne Reber, who was also a trainer at the Summer School.
The three ideas that are chosen will then receive funding from the Investigative Story Fund.
The ninth BIRN Summer School brought together young journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Britain and the United States. For the first time, the Summer School also welcomed journalists from Moldova and Ukraine.
The Summer School is organised in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, the Open Society Foundations and the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the operational unit of the Austrian Development Cooperation, with support from the European Union.