"Local Journalism Needs Stable and Transparent Financing"

As grantees of #CBLocal grant programme gathered in Zagreb, Croatia this week to discuss the state of local journalism, participants of this 2-day event came out with a sense of purpose to make local local journalism more sustainable.

In the Journalist’s House in Zagreb, Sindikat Novinara Hrvatske (SNH) joined the networking event with other journalists who received grants to work on stories as part of the Local Cross-border Journalism project.

SNH were able to interview the former grantees as well as participants of the networking event. Vanja Stokić from eTrafika.net "discovered how institutions are reluctant to properly identify and bury refugees and migrants who drown in rivers in the Serbia-BiH-Croatia triangle." She added that “My colleague and I found more than 50 unidentified graves of migrants, which means that more than 50 families will not find out what happened to their sons, husbands, brothers…"

Another grantee from Hungary, Anna Debreczeni, from G7.hu portal "investigated for whom the old industrial areas are demolished to be replaced by some new settlements?" Her colleagues from Prague and Sofia joined her in her investigation. An Italian grantee, Marzia Minore, investigated if schools in "Europe give equal opportunities to refugee children?" She organised a team of 7 journalists and all of them "had to learn to coordinate with each other." Minore added that "It is more natural for journalists to write articles, not projects."

European Federation of Journalist also organised workshops for financing and brainstormed "on how to help local media."

To read more about the event, please click here.

Photo by Ronald Tipan