At another sold out Dataharvest, 500 journalists from around the world arrived in Mechelen, Belgium to launch or continue collaborations, hear each other’s stories and understand each other’s work, and share the skills that make contemporary investigative journalism so powerful.
But we know many of our friends and colleagues were not able to make it this year. So, here is a summary of some of the things we learned at EIJC25.
With over 120 sessions on a variety of different topics, from data journalism to storytelling, from the use of right to information laws to different investigative OSINT techniques, we can’t possibly cover them all! So save the date for next year’s festival — 28-31 May 2026 — and look out for our ticket release at the end of this year.
The Keynote: “Killing the journalist won’t kill the story”
This year’s keynote was delivered by Laurent Richard of Forbidden Stories, who discussed their latest cross-border collaborations to signal boost the work of war correspondents in Gaza and Russia. Forbidden Stories is “an international network of journalists whose mission, unique in the world, is to continue the investigations of other reporters who have been silenced.”
Firstly, Laurent told of the Viktoriia Project. Twelve global outlets came together to continue the investigation of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, whose work telling the story of civilian suffering in Russian prisons came to an end in 2024 when she landed in the very prison system she was investigating.
Viktoriia was tortured, and died in custody. Forbidden Stories gathered some of the world’s biggest newsrooms, from Ukrainska Pravda to the Washington Post, to continue her reporting.
Laurent then outlined the work of the Gaza Project, sharing the case of Fadi Al-Wahidi, who was reporting alongside a crew of journalists from Al Jazeera, Al Araby TV, and others in 2024 when he was shot by what the crew claimed was an “Israeli quadcopter”. Fadi remains paralysed from the waist down since the event.
Footage of the event from numerous angles, obtained exclusively by Forbidden Stories, was analysed using OSINT techniques. Alongside a number of reporting partners, they were able to reconstruct and clarify the events that led to Fadi’s injuries.
The Live Journalism Showcase: “This is the power of Dataharvest in action”
For the first time at Dataharvest, we hosted a performance of Live Journalism! In contexts such as the Depression-era US, theatre was blended with journalism, but modern live journalism is a experiencing a resurgence in our political context too, and is a newly growing phenomenon across the world.
Produced with Christine Liehr, co-founder and managing director of Headliner, our colleagues Stéphane Horel and Raphaëlle Aubert brought a ‘showcase’ version of their award-winning investigation into PFAS pollution, a DIY experimental kind of theatre, which brought it to life. This investigation was instigated and cultivated between participants at Dataharvest, the story of which formed the opening of the performance. Stéphane noted that this, both the performance and the investigation itself, “is the power of Dataharvest in action”.
Watch the finale of the piece, showing how the audience has helped the investigators “make the invisible, visible”.
Job roles: “What is an Investigations Co-ordinator?”
We learned all about the importance of bringing teams together effectively, in a session about the relatively new role of ‘investigations co-ordinator’ which has developed alongside cross-border collaborative journalism.
It was argued that the role is not quite that of an editor, or that of a project manager, but is more like the work of a producer in film or TV. A producer role has an editorial element, but also often deals with complex logistics as well as other disciplines, such as managing the image and sound teams, including, perhaps, animation.
It’s now a ‘trending’ job role, but it’s still not well defined. This means the work is very flexible and developing, but that it’s difficult to know what characteristics someone needs to do the job well.
Our panel felt that it was important to be someone who is good at building trust, understanding editorial workflows, managing resources and capacity, and being a bit of a therapist! The coordinator also needs to assess how many are needed in the team (the advice was keep teams as small as possible), what range of skills is important and whether people will complement each other’s skills.
It’s also important to determine a ‘minimum viable product’ — your ‘maximum’ goal might be ‘change the world’, but that’s an ideal: teams need to agree what they can achieve and publish – individually and together. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) can be drawn up once this is decided, and it can be referred to in regular meetings, which should become more frequent as publishing gets nearer.
Finally, ensuring you have an overview of the legal context of each country is important. Some countries have more restrictions, and if you’re able to anticipate this it could avoid the failure of the project down the line. As an example, it’s a crime in Switzerland for Swiss outlets to report on leaks from banks — but they can refer to publications in other countries. You might also need to help newer participants work out what they should and shouldn’t publish if they don’t know the risks and they’re too small to launch a legal defence.
Part of the Arena team’s work is to act as investigation co-ordinators, producing award-winning work such as the Under the Surface project:
Journalism skills for holding power to account: “Supply chains are power maps”
The Pulitzer Center brought us a session about tracking the supply chains and money flows in Europe that contribute to environmental destruction in the Global South. Supply chains connect everything, and now that they are global, sophisticated and complex, they are therefore often difficult to investigate.
But it’s worth it: supply chains are very revealing as power maps. They show how finance and trade translate into political agendas, and cover so many journalistic beats: labour, environment, corruption, geopolitics, public health, and corporate and government accountability.
They’re also great examples of investigations that work particularly well in collaborative, cross-border teams. Two specific case studies of supply chain investigations from the Pulitzer Center demonstrated this: a collaboration with Follow the Money, about EU claims of sustainable fishing in the Indian Ocean, and another, with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism about the ‘collagen craze’ that drives deforestation.
We learned how teams followed the trail of the products, and subproducts through whole production chains. We also learned that there are three pillars to investigating supply chains: field work, data work, and collaboration with NGOsand other journalists.
Where to start with a supply chain investigation – raw material or end product? It depends on each case and story. The methodology the Pulitzer Center used for one of their supply chain investigations is covered in this blog:
Risky Research: How to protect yourself when doing sensitive research and reporting in the field
Our colleagues at Global Focus and the Share Foundation ran a crucial session on protecting yourself while reporting. It’s important that, before starting an investigation, you assess what you’re protecting, who you’re protecting it from — e.g. state actors, cybercriminals, online trolls — and how much harm a breach could cause.
Advanced protection needs a robust strategy: you can use tactics like strict communication protocols, anonymity tools, dedicating devices so that some travel, and some always remain in the office. You will have to come up with need-to-know policies to reduce your digital and physical footprint. And don’t forget that good digital hygiene will always beyour first line of defence. Keep devices updated, back up data regularly, use strong passwords and 2FA, encrypt communications, and stay vigilant against phishing.
Travelling for risky reporting requires special precautions. Ensure that you’re in the habit of doing risk assessments, securing devices and powering them off at borders, using encrypted communication, avoiding unknown networks, and send any sensitive data home during the trip.
And don’t forget that the follow-up matters. Do an after-trip cleanup, change your passwords, check devices, and report any incidents.
Security is not just about tools, it’s a mindset and a team habit. Security culture is a collective, ongoing effort, in which we prioritise safety, wellbeing, and care as the foundation of every investigation. If you’re interested in learning more, look at the Share Foundation’s cybersecurity toolkit:
Innovative non-fiction podcast serials for investigative journalism
Finally, we know that podcasts reach new, diverse audiences and that narrative podcast serials are one of the fastest growing formats, especially among people who often avoid traditional news. These are a great way to tell complex, overlooked stories; but many teams lack the skills to produce them still. Journalists from Pismo in Poland and Fumaça in Portugal gave a masterclass in how they make their work stand out.
The key to podcast success is storytelling and sound design. Strong investigative reporting is just the start — it will be crucial to embed in your team people with the skills to turn your reporting into a strong narrative by using immersive sound design and thoughtful music choices, as well as the fascinating insights and solid structure that your story starts with.
If you want to begin producing, then prepare to iterate, simplify, and focus. Like most stories, podcasts evolve through drafts, so it’s okay to rework treatments, scripts, and audio versions. Be prepared to cut characters or details to keep the story clear, and if you need to, steal techniques from existing podcasts: use voice messages, archive tape, long-form interviews, and original soundtracks.
Record everything, even casual moments. Empathy and transparency build trust, and can be key to getting that game-changing interview. Listen with radical empathy and stay transparent, letting stories unfold naturally via the human connection.
Start by interviewing the key players in your story, particularly those most affected by the situation, and work your way through other characters to paint a bigger picture.
And finally, when promoting your work, bring listeners into the investigation. You can use newsletters, social media and events to keep your audience updated throughout the process. Letting them feel like they’re part of the journeyhelps connect you with people who will come back time and time again to your work.
Visit Pismo’s website to see how they not only produce podcasts, but also publish recordings of texts from their magazine delivering accessible audio versions of their written work.
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The 2025 edition Presentations speakers shared with us can be found here (additional slides will be uploaded as we receive them), and you can find our picture gallery of Dataharvest 2025 here.
This concludes another year of cross-border, collaborative work at Dataharvest, the European Investigative Journalism Conference. Thanks for reading, and we will see you in 2026!