From the Arena Housing Network to the European Cities investigative Journalism Accelerator

Local journalism in the cities of Europe

Affordable dorms for students, corporate landlords driving up rental costs and bullying tenants, freezing at christmas due to exploding energy prizes. Or indeed mapping, which cities have a growing young population, and which cities have ageing populations. These are just a few stories producded by the European Cities Investigative Journalism Accelerator, a collaboration of European media.

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Reference mailing list moves to Netzwerk Recherche

The mailing list for the European Network of Independent Journalism Organisations was set up after expression of interest during the Dataharvest Digital 2020 conference to launch a European network of independent journalism organisations. The list was jointly set up by Arena for Journalism in Europe and Netzwerk Recherche.

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Learning lunch: How agriculture pollutes our waters (and the EU does ‘too little, too late’)

Join us for a learning lunch on Wednesday, February 8, from 13:00 -14:15 CET. Click here to join.

60 per cent of Europe’s surface water (lakes, rivers etc.) are not in a good chemical or ecological status, and more than a quarter of the ground water is in the same state – and industrial agriculture remains one of the main pressures on our water bodies. These numbers are probably even underestimated, due to insufficient data and the current testing practices.

These are some of the conclusions highlighted in “Troubled Waters”, a new research project by Jelena Prtorić from Arena for Journalism in Europe and Luisa Izuzquiza from the German NGO FragDenStaat. The two

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Billions of public funds for big business – the Farmsubsidy database relaunched

The EU hands out more than €50 bn of public funds to the agricultural sector every year. The political side claims to support sustainable farming and family businesses, but the figures show otherwise. The big agricultural sector industries, corporations, the Catholic church and others are among the major beneficiaries, according to a series of fresh investigations published today.

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Journalism educations go cross-border with Arena as partner

Ready to go: The meeting in Paris was between Edouard Perrin (CFJ, Paaris), Felix Irmer (IfKMW, Leipzig), Ulla Sätereie (JMG, Gothenburg), Stéphanie Lebrun (CFJ, Paris), Brigitte Alfter (Arena for Journalism in Europe), Sandra Foresti (JMG, Gothenburg), Helena Löfving (JMG, Gothenburg), Maria Hendrischke (IfKMW, Leipzig) und Uwe Krüger (IfKMW, Leipzig). Photo: CFJ

Five European journalism educations and Arena for Journalism in Europe are ready to begin work with the very first Cross-border Journalism Campus with the aim of integrating the cross-border method in journalism from the very beginning. Representatives of the schools met recently in Paris to launch to first phase of the project.

The five journalism educations are Gothenburg University (Sweden), Universität Leipzig (Germany), Universiteit van Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Oslomet – Storbyuniversitetet (Norway) and Centre de Formation des

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Arena launches Food & Water Network – join in!

At the European Investigative Journalism Conference – Dataharvest in May 2022 we jointly launched the Food & Water Network. On a sunny Saturday afternoon in Mechelen, 50 journalists, civil society representatives and academics came together at the conference’s Food & Water Roundtable to discuss key issues and necessary research around food and water across Europe.

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“Cities for Rent” receives the European Press Prize for Innovation

The Arena-coordinated cross-border investigation “Cities for Rent” won the European Press Prize for Innovation, when the prizes were announced on June 2nd.

Cities for Rent is a cross-border investigation into the phenomenon of corporate landlords: private companies that have been acquiring more and more homes for profit across European cities. It has grown out of the Arena Housing Network, a collaborative network of journalists interested in housing launched by Arena at Dataharvest 2019,

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Independent media self-organise

Being the head of an independent public interest medium can be quite lonely. Especially when it comes to handling managerial issues in the organisation. At the same time, more and more of these independent outlets have been established throughout Europe in the past years. In order to solve organisational problems that nobody can solve alone, eighteen European independent media have decided to join forces in the self-organised exchange network Reference, the European Independent Media Circle.

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Free training on climate and environment data and OSINT

(Photo: Mika Baumeister)

Call for applications: ‘Learning by doing’ training followed by an investigation into climate

Are you interested in topics such as climate change, energy supply or environmental wrongdoing? Have you already done some investigative work, but would like to upgrade your investigative and/or data skills? If the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, the training offered by Arena for Journalism in Europe, supported by the European Climate Foundation, might just be for you.

Over the course of six weeks, the participants will gain hands-on knowledge in how to set up and organise a cross-border investigation and research, where to look for data and how to work with it, gain OSINT skills (applied to environmental reporting) as will be able to attend topical sessions relevant to the climate issues we’ll explore.

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