Tag: Trainers 2026

Based in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, Azem reports on daily developments for BIRN’s Balkan Insight and Balkan Transitional Justice programme. He covers politics, rule of law and human rights, transitional justice, corruption and organised crime, producing in-depth analyses, investigations and features combining elements of traditional and data journalism and multimedia storytelling.

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Geolocation and Visual Investigation

In this session, participants will explore how to harness open-source techniques and visual clues to uncover, verify and analyse digital evidence found online.

Through hands-on examples, the training will show how even the most ordinary elements in a photo or video can reveal the exact location of an event.

Attendees will learn how to cross-reference visuals with publicly available satellite imagery, maps, and metadata, and use investigative tools like Google Earth, Street View and reverse image search to build solid geolocation findings.

Ana has been working as a journalist since 1997. She was a staff writer for the Skopje-based Forum magazine until 2000. During the 1999 Kosovo conflict, she also worked with television stations Arte, Spiegel TV and RAI Uno.

In 2000 she won a scholarship for a professional year development at Indiana University’s School of Journalism and spent a year in the United States. While overseas, she worked as a correspondent for Deutsche Welle’s Macedonian service.

From 2001 until May 2003 she covered the Macedonian conflict and its aftermath for Reuters. In 2002 she was Associate producer of IWPR`s documentary “Ohrid and beyond”. She was IWPR Country Director for Macedonia from 2003 until 2005.

In 2005 she established the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Macedonia, a local non-governmental organisation which is part of the wider regional network. In 2006 she produced BIRN`s documentary on Kosovo “Does Anyone Have a Plan?”. She has chaired and attended numerous public debates and is often invited to comment on current affairs in Macedonia by local and international media as The Economist, Radio Free Europe, BBC, CNN.

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 under-reported: 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 Karla Juničić, Engaged Citizens Reporting Programme Coordinator, 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.

Freedom of Information: Using FOI to Strengthen Investigative Reporting

This session will explore how Freedom of Information (FOI) can be used as a powerful tool for investigative journalism. It will focus on practical ways journalists can use FOI requests to uncover information, generate new leads, verify findings and strengthen evidence-based investigations. The session will also look at common challenges journalists face when requesting information and strategies for overcoming them.

Alex Anderson spent his early career in the former Soviet countries, alternating between running intergovernmental humanitarian aid projects and researching for investigative TV documentaries. After completing a master’s in social policy, he progressed as a researcher/country director through international human rights and conflict prevention.

NGOs: covering a range of Eastern European countries for Amnesty International, the South Caucasus for Human Rights Watch and Kosovo for the International Crisis Group. 

Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2026 Sessions

Policy-oriented investigative reporting

The training will show how to adjust research, writing and follow-up to the requirements of policy-oriented reporting. 

Field investigation → Political analysis → Prescription → Intended policy effect

Recreating the International Crisis Group high-impact model

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 US Supreme Court; and Cheat Sheet, an investigation into how standardised tests used by universities  to determine who to accept have been compromised by rampant, systematic cheating and other security failures.

Projects he has overseen have resulted in decades of jail time for individuals whose wrongdoing the Reuters investigations have exposed.

Prior to joining Reuters, Blake served as the investigations editor, deputy enterprise editor and investigative reporter at USA TODAY. His investigation into the impact of industrial pollution on schoolchildren spurred the US 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 2026 Sessions

The Investigative Mindset

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

Formulating Story Ideas: How to Structure Your Pitch

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.

The Art of Interview

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