Online journalism, in-depth

The challenge...

How to present the impact of climate change without just crunching numbers? How to write about algorithms and social bots in a way that attracts attention not only among computer nerds but also among your typical audience?

Complex issues tend to be tiring or even boring - and reporting on them requires more than just repeating what other media said before. But general advice such as to adapt the topic to your local context and tell an interesting story about real people are easier said than done, especially in a situation, when media struggle with a lack of finances, time, staff and information - or even face political repression. As a result, in many countries, important questions such as the impact of climate change rank surprisingly low on the political agenda. Sometimes media even unintentedly contribute to the dissemination of disinformation (e.g. related to health issues). Online journalism, in-depth provides participating media with funding, time and expertise - the ingredients of high-quality, in-depth reporting.

.. and how the project intends to mitigate it

In the course of the project participating media have a chance

• to network with colleagues from neighbouring countries and develop cross-border stories
• to receive financial support for content production
• to connect with experts on the respective topic
  
• to participate in trainings to learn about new journalistic approaches and improve their journalistic skills
  
• to deepen their personal knowledge about key questions shaping our the nearest future

We believe that close cooperation between journalists and experts will  improve the quality of reporting and public debate on important international issues. Therefore, in the long run, the project aims at  creating three sustainable networks encompassing journalists, experts and civil society actors – working to the benefit of all: While journalists will gain access to reliable quality information, experts and activists improve their chances to inform public debate and to impact political decision-making.

Internal organisation & funding

The 12 participating media are sorted into three groups, according to their respective focus topic, i.e. there is a climate group, a health group and a info-society group each consisting of 4 media, one from each project country. The groups are corrdinated by one of the project consortium partners:

• n-ost is in charge of the climate group and its activities
  
• Publika runs all activities related to the topic of health
• IMI is the lead partner for "information society"

The project is funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Project Workshops

Project activities included organization of 4 Offline Workshops: 

• From 13 to 15 November 2022, a regional workshop "Tracking Trolls, Checking Channels: A Workshop on Media Resilience against Disinformation" was held in Warsaw.
  
• Health journalism workshop was hosted in Tbilisi on November 3-4, 2022, co-organized by Cactus Media and Publika.
• From 22 to 25 May 2023, the regional workshop “Climate Journalism: Communicating Climate Neutrality in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus” was held in Tbilisi, Georgia.
• Workshop centered around climate storytelling and engagement at the Climate Arena Conference in Vienna, Austria, that took place on 8-9 November, 2023.

The final conference of a media project organized by n-ost, Publika and the Institute of Mass Communication

The aim of the project was to build three journalistic networks on three different topics: Climate, Health and Information society. The Conference program included workshops on different topic such as finding open sources for climate investigations, discussing the impact of climate on health, features of climate journalism in the context of war in Ukraine, Belarus-Ukraine relation, field tours in Tbilisi, and discussions on the impact of foreign agent laws on media and how to make climate a relevant topic in newsrooms.