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Description
Over the last couple of years Poland dropped from the 18th (in 2015) position of the Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking to the 66th (in 2022). Authors of the 2021 ‘A New Deal for Journalism’ report (Forum on Information & Democracy) argue that independent journalism is now facing numerous threats – financial crisis, decline of public trust and the rebirth of authoritarian governance. Since 2015, the media market in Poland has been being largely politicised and centralised, and there are no occasions for independent media (both local and national) to exchange experience and knowledge.We will address these problems by creating an Investigative Journalism Hub – a cooperation and exchange programme between local media and journalists or investigative journalists. We will organise Investigaton – a investigative journalism marathon for journalists from local and national media. During the event we will run workshops and will initiative cooperation between teams. We want journalists to support one another in raising their competencies and enrich the workshop with new work tools. The Investigative Journalism Hub, namely the network of investigative journalists will be based on cooperation and not competition, e.g., members will gather data together and work in teams. Within the Hub we will support cooperation between teams by means of mentoring, knowledge exchange and access to new work tools. We will support groups of journalists in their work on topics that are crucial for local communities and are of supralocal significance.
Summary of project results
In the Reporters Without Borders ranking, Poland has fallen from 18th place (in 2015) to 66th (in 2022) in terms of media freedom in just a few years. According to the authors of the 2021 report A New Deal for Journalism (Forum on Information & Democracy), independent journalism faces several threats - a financial crisis, declining public trust, and resurgent authoritarian governments. In the case of Poland after 2015, the media market has been largely politicized and centralized, and there has been a lack of opportunities for the exchange of experience and knowledge between independent media (both national and local).
We responded to these problems by creating the Investigative Journalism Hub - a program of cooperation and exchange between local media and investigative journalists and journalists. We organized Investigaton, an investigative journalism marathon, to which we invited journalists and female journalists from local and national media. During the event, we held workshops and initiated activities in inter-editorial teams. We wanted journalists and female journalists to support each other in improving their competencies and expanding their workshops with new working tools. The Investigative Journalism Hub, a network of investigative journalist(s), is based on collaboration, not competition, e.g., through joint data collection and working in teams. Within the Hub, we wanted to support inter-editorial teams through mentoring, knowledge sharing, and access to new working tools. We served to help groups of journalists and journalists work on topics that are important for local communities and of supra-local relevance.
We mainly targeted our project at journalists. From the evaluation, we found out that the participants had the opportunity to structure their existing knowledge. In addition, the tools shown to them were familiar, but they discovered new methods of using them. They also emphasized the importance of teamwork in a diverse group.
One of the published investigative articles, "Poland Lies on a Bomb," was also a success for our project. It turned out that the Ministry of Climate had outdated maps of illegal rubbish dumps, and this particular article was used by them to counter this problem.
As an additional activity, we created a film in which we summarised and discussed the earlier project. We also organised a training course for 17 people on formatting and strategy building for local portals, which was attended by a dozen people. We also worked on improving the Lokalsi 4.0 app, which we created as part of an earlier project. We also continued working on the Lokalsi 4.0 application that we created as part of a previous project - the app needs to be updated and improved.As an additional activity, we prepared a continuity and knowledge consolidation strategy based on the evaluation of all elements of the main project. We developed recommendations and a fundraising strategy for the next editions of Investigathon and a development plan for the Investigative Journalism Hub, including a mentoring consultation programme. We also strengthened our competences and access to cutting-edge knowledge through the participation of trainers in two international journalism conferences - International Journalism Festival, 17-21.04 2024 (Perugia, Italy) and Dataharvest The European Investigative Journalism Conference, 30.05-2.06 2024 (Mechelen, Belgium).