The European Investigative Journalism Conference

Pre-Conference program Thursday November 5

Join us the day before the conference for three intensive master classes or help out at the HackDay!

Hack Day

The day before the conference, journalists and coders get together for Hack Day to clean and prepare data sets that are relevant for journalists. In 2020 we will concentrate on data sets concerning European climate and energy. During the conference, participants can learn how to understand and use the data after they return to their newsrooms. Come join us, if you want to contribute and bring home your own data sets!

Workshop: Let’s keep the fire burning – prevent it from burning out!

Investigative projects come with all kinds of pressures that have effect on our physical, mental and emotional well-being – and ultimately on our ability to sustain and increase our potential and the work we most care about. We have all heard of colleagues who have experienced burnout after long investigations – a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. 

In this workshop you will learn about stress, become more aware of your automatic reactions and practice some basic tools that you can use in your daily life to avoid burnout. The workshop will also address procedures and policies that editors and project coordinators might consider to create a healthier and more sustainable working environment.

The workshop will be led by experienced journalists who will share their own stress-related experiences and setbacks and by a stress reduction and personal leadership trainer and coach who will provide  useful frameworks and tools.   

Masterclass: OSINT – advanced online research techniques

Search way beyond Google. Open Source Intelligence gives you the possibility of digging out information from sources on the internet that you will not find with ordinary searches. This masterclass gives you tools and techniques to go further in your research. You will get to know new software, learn where to find the sources that are not indexed by the search machines – and we will discuss how to fact-check and assess the sources you find.

Masterclass: Investigating the EU – an introduction

Your local ambulances? They are run by a company that won a public tender according to EU law but via your local authorities. Your medicines? They are approved for marketing according to EU law – but via national or EU bodies. Farmsubsidies to large landowners? They come from EU budgets – but via national paying agencies.

Funds for research cooperation at your national university? Regulation on pesticides on your fields and food? It all comes from the EU, based on EU laws, involving an EU agency, EU officials – and most probably EU level lobbyists.

All very important and relevant – but can you cover the EU without losing track? Do you know how to file an FOI request? Do you know where to find data, and did you know that the database on payments made directly by the EU is openly accessible?

You will learn all this in this master class. This day will start with an introduction of the structures, the decision making and how to find out whether your local municipality, your home country or indeed the EU is responsible in a given situation. It will also let you know where to go looking for data, documents, politicians, lobbyists and officials.