Our Community Platform: a space to collaborate, network and share knowledge
We are launching a new tool to make our Community grow stronger, in collaboration with our member iMEdD. It is called Community Platform, and it will allow the Press Prize family to collaborate, network and share knowledge.
During our Community Event at iMEdD’s International Journalism Week, last October, we announced a big novelty: soon we would have made available a safe digital space for the Prize Community. A space designed specifically for our Laureates, PrepCom, Judges and Members, providing opportunities to connect and work together.
We worked for several months to design and develop this tool along with iMEdD, as we share a common vision, to grow and strengthen a European community of journalists whose excellent work will always be contributing to the public interest.
Now, we are officially launching it. We called it: Community Platform.
Collaboration is the future of European journalism
When in September 2021, during our Ceremony in Berlin, we asked our Laureates what the future of European journalism is, we kept hearing the same answer: collaboration.
In the same year, in a survey conducted for internal use, we asked journalists who submitted their work why they applied for the Prize and what the Prize can do to help journalism. The answers? “To feel like I am part of a bigger picture,” “Networking with other European journalists,” “Sharing of information about outlets and published articles to network.”
Collaboration, networking and sharing are the answers to our “what” and “how,” at the European Press Prize.
And this was proven again in 2022, at our first Community Event, an opportunity to see our Prize family come together and chart the course.
A dedicated space to always be connected
The Community Platform will be an online space where our Community will be able to build itself. Our platform users will have an easier way to safely connect and get each other’s contacts, to then talk about new collaborations, projects, investigations, to ask questions and share their ideas.
Every year, 20 projects – 25 this year, with the new Migration Journalism Award – get into our Shortlist, and many projects have numerous journalists behind them. After ten years of existence, this means that way more than 200 Laureates have entered our Community.
We will always have meetings in real life – be it at our Ceremony, our Community Event or wherever else we can – but as our Community will keep growing larger, it is time to give it a Platform to grow even stronger.
We do this for all future journalists, because the Prize is more than a simple award, and we believe journalists can shape their profession together.
Join the Platform
If you are a Laureate and would like to be invited to our Community Platform, please reach out to our Contracts & Partner Lead Jennifer at [email protected]
European Cities Investigative Journalism Accelerator: The continuation of Cities for Rent
In every corner of the continent, our Laureates launch projects that make journalism stronger and more relevant for the public. We present one of them: the European Cities Investigative Journalism Accelerator, the continuation of the 2022 winning investigation Cities for Rent.
Part of the Cities for Rent team at our 2022 Award Ceremony in Madrid
In 2022 our Innovation Award went to Cities for Rent, a cross-border collaborative project that investigated the housing market and corporate landlords in 14 European capital cities.
Following up on Cities for Rent, media partners have reorganised in the newly called “European Cities Investigative Journalism Accelerator” (ECIJA) network, focused on urban challenges.
The network now counts more than 10 members, such as, among others, Tagesspiegel, Deník Referendum, El País, IRPI Media, Reporters United, Dublin Inquirer, ORF, Telex and Gazeta Wyborcza.
A Virtual European Newsroom to investigate shared urban challenges
Following-up on its housing market investigations, many partners have already published a first research project looking into the student housing crisis. But ECIJA also wants to look beyond housing, investigating urban challenges shared among European cities.
“European cities share many urban challenges: from transport to climate change adaptation, from energy to crime. Going beyond housing, we want to investigate these issues – challenges that make cities such as Berlin, Prague and Rome have more in common than big and small cities within national borders” – Hendrik Lehmann, Tagesspiegel
Alongside proceeding with its housing investigation, the network has started regularly producing data visualization on different city-level topics, such as population trends or energy prices, to give two recent examples.
The graphics are shared among the network through new technology developed by Tagesspiegel which allows for dataviz to be easily translated into different languages, thus facilitating shared reporting and syndication across the network’s media outlets.
Bringing together both large and small newsrooms with different business models, the network also wants to experiment and find better ways to generate new supporters/subscribers for media outlets doing investigative journalism and continue to innovate in collaborative journalism. Ultimately working towards a truly European journalism.
Help the network grow