Arena for Journalism in Europe has been supporting journalists to collaborate across borders for more than 15 years. Our Arena Academy has a strong track record training people in-person with fellowships, academic courses, and residencies.
Now, Arena is launching our Online Academy with a seven week course: Your First Cross-border Investigation, adapted from our flagship cross-border training.
Collaboration, and particularly cross-border skills, has been the focus of our existing fellowships, the European Collaborative Journalism Programme (ECJP) delivered in partnership with the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, and our academic training at the Cross-border Journalism Campus.
With the launch of our Online Academy, we are broadening our reach to anyone who wants to learn collaborative methods, regardless of location. Our trainers are pioneers in data journalism, experts in AI and impact, and experienced in many other aspects of collaboration, from coordination and dealing with conflict, to digital security. We will be adding courses to our online offering covering all these aspects of collaborating across borders, and many more.
“I genuinely feel that your role as educators and mentors was more than fundamental in shaping the way I work today.”
– Gianluca Liva, freelance journalist and ECJP ’21 fellow
Bringing our flagship training online
Journalists who have received our cross-border training have gone on to publish agenda-setting investigations and win accolades including Sigma Awards and the European Press Prize.
Many people find life-long collaborators on our programmes and we are proud to continue to support them with mentoring, IT, networks, conferences, research and more. Online, we can reach more people and continue to pioneer the field, helping even seasoned journalists learn new skills that can more easily create impact beyond national borders.
“It was on one of Arena’s courses, the European Collaborative Journalism Programme, that I first encountered the cross-border method and a whole new world of collaborators, colleagues and friends. It was a career-changing experience! So it feels very special to be part of the Arena team as we launch our online academy with “Your First Cross-Border Investigation”. We spent months designing and testing the online version of the programme to make sure remote teams get the same mix of tools, networking and mentorship for their first cross-border project. I can’t wait to get started.”
– Hazel Sheffield, Arena Networks co-ordinator and Academy trainer
Examples of investigations produced following Arena training include an investigation into the black-market bankers brokering deals between migrants and people smugglers, exploitation of marginalised OnlyFans performers, and the greenwashing of carbon offsets.
Our first online offering: Cross-border 101
The first in Arena Academy’s new online course series is a seven-week online version of our flagship training: the process of building a cross-border investigation from start to finish.
Cross-border collaborative journalism is a fast-evolving and essential discipline in an increasingly networked world, reflected in the increasing number of applicants to our courses in recent years.
In the wake of major international publications such as the Panama Papers and the Pegasus Project, including Arena’s award-winning cross-border projects Green to Grey and the Forever Pollution Project, an increasing number of journalists and editors understand the need to be able to navigate projects that transcend borders, on supply chains, tech monopolies, migration and more.
Arena’s expert trainers, Hazel Sheffield and Jonathan Stoneman, will deliver the mentorship and structure needed to learn a proven framework in team-building, organising research material, finding funding and pitching to editors who may never have commissioned an international investigation before.
“As we say in the ad for the course, it’s for people who want to do collaborative journalism but don’t know where to start – but it’s way more than that – it’s a chance to begin a real investigation, not just an exercise, while being shown best practice in collaborative journalism by people who have actually done it!”
– Jonathan Stoneman, Arena Academy co-ordinator and trainer
What does the first course include?
The course fee of €800 includes not only teaching and group-work, but also ‘office hours’ for extra mentoring and access to the secure collaborative working tools of Arena’s Collaborative Desk during, and for three months after, the course (normally €600 minimum per team per year). Concessions are available, and we urge anyone for whom this cost is a barrier to contact us on academy@journalismarena.eu.
By the end of the course, participants will be collaborating with their newly formed team, and on their way to publishing their first cross-border investigation.
“The cross border attitude and way of working is an absolute reference to me […] ECJP helped us connect, for sure and forever, and also helped changing the way we work — colleagues as teammates, rather than competitors.”
– Catherine Joie, freelance journalist and ECJP ’20 fellow
The deadline for applications to Your First Cross-border Investigation is September 6, and the course begins on October 6.
The second in our online course series will be a three part course on using data and AI in storytelling, and will be announced in full later in the summer.
Find out more about Arena’s online courses here.