Apply to the European Collaborative Journalism Programme

The Toepfer Foundation has launched a new round of the European Collaborative Journalism Programme (ECJP), a two-part bootcamp designed to help you develop you kickstart your next cross-border investigation, in collaboration with Arena for Journalism.

Cross-border stories are indispensable when you look at today’s big questions such migration, climate, organised crime, pollution or consumer protection. So many of these stories don’t stop at the border.

And in an era of declining resources for journalism, collaborative journalism provides the means to maintain investigations, allowing you to pool resources, share expertise, analyse facts and data together, and to also publish in several publications at the same time, ultimately having a greater impact.

But it’s not always easy to get started with this. So with the Toepfer Foundation we will deliver a programme to provide you with the training and support you need.

The Programme: In the first part of ECJP, participants will meet for a week in the wonderful retreat of Gut Siggen, by the baltic sea on the north coast of Germany. There, experts will provide this small group with advice, training and facilitate discussions to help develop your cross-border investigation ideas.

Participants will be encouraged to build up a network among each other, and they will have the possibility to further explore developing collaborative stories, receive feedback from experts and peers, and to reflect their work practices and routines.

The second meet-up will be at Dataharvest 2024 – the European Investigative Journalism Conference, where working groups will catch up, and you will be able to draw on the enormous wealth of experience from the conference’s 130 sessions and 500+ attendees.

Target group: Junior and mid-career journalists from all over Europe, freelancers as well as staffers from all media, who already have first experiences with collaborative journalism or who firmly intend to work in this field.

Dates 2024: 
09 – 13 April 2024
: Gut Siggen Conference Centre, Germany 
30 May – 2 June 2024: Follow up-meeting at Dataharvest 2024, Belgium

Read more about the programme and find out how to apply.

Deadline to apply: 23:59 CET, Monday 8 January 2024