Stars4Media NEWS 1st Edition

Testimonials

“I had never had the opportunity to carry out such a complex investigation and to be able to dedicate more than 3 months to a single project. Thanks to this, the result is really extensive and detailed.” – Elena Basso, journalist

“We all think that the skills and competencies gained through Stars4Media have been very helpful since both our media products and professional careers have now a different appeal to other media partners.” – Michele Calamaio, journalist

“It created a unique opportunity to try a partnership : we will definitely build new projects together after this initiative is completed.” – India Bouquerel, editor-in-chief

“This grant let us kickstart an initiative to enhance the wellbeing of journalists during the pandemic, when burnout and stress were high. It also allowed us to partner with major journalism organizations such as Open News, ONA and ICFJ, with which we plan to fundraise further. We are also actively engaging with media companies and training institutions.” – Kim Brice, trainer

“The daily and weekly confrontation with Bulle Media colleagues has opened a world of possibilities and collaborations that we did not imagine at the beginning of the project. Linkiesta is very happy to produce a podcast and is considering producing many more series in the future thanks to the things we are learning with colleagues from Bulle Media.” – Andrea Fioravanti, journalist

“All activities accomplished during this period and the coming months are positive lessons that will help in our careers. On one side, despite the specific knowledge you need to develop your profession, you will also need to expand your “soft” abilities: teamwork, prioritizing, decision management, working effectively with others, problem-solving…” – Paloma Scharfhausen, marketing manager

“This program boosted my confidence and increased my network substantially.” – Evangelista Sie, journalist

First edition winners: Five outstanding initiatives

Initiative formed by 4 journalists coordinated by Are We Europe: awarded with the Reacting to the Coronavirus Prize!

Initiative formed by Linkiesta and Bulle Media: awarded with the Tust Prize!

Initiative formed by Frameright and the Spanish news agency EFE: awarded with the Data Prize!

Initiative formed by 3 journalists from Austria, the UK and Portugal: awarded with the Diversity Prize!

Initiative formed by Centro di Giornalismo Permanente, Street Press, El Salto: awarded with the Cross-border cooperation Prize!

The summer of 2020

Initiative formed by Johannes de Bruycker, Kasper Goethals, Coen van de Ven, Olivia Kortas and Kyrill Hartog, journalists from different European countries and Are We Europe. The goal of this initiative was to set up a cross-border collaboration of journalists from different EU member states that cover European affairs in an innovative way. The initiative reported on the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for the European Union in the summer of 2020. The team travelled together and collaborated online, to improve their skill sets, while producing high-quality multilingual journalism that resonates with audiences in different European countries.

Download the presentation (pdf) and the booklet is available here.

Watch the video here. Deliverables can be found here.

Wounds of Europe

Initiative formed by the online Italian news outlet Linkiesta and by the podcasts production agency Bulle Media, specialized in journalistic production. The purpose of the project was to produce a podcast series on European integration, based on data journalism and thorough historical research. The series has dealt with six social and economic topics (wounds) that are relevant to the politics of European nation-states and, beyond that, to the Union as a whole. Six episodes of the podcast have been produced, according to the plan, each focusing on a specific issue:

  • The Catalan issue
  • The integration process of Germany after 1989
  • The open wound between the two Irelands
  • The fallout of the Rule of Law in Poland and Hungary
  • The division of Cyprus
  • Scenarios of a post-Brexit England

Deliverables: Podcast series Oltre l’Europa (language: Italian).

Watch the video here. Download the presentation (pdf).

Visual journalism without constraints

Initiative formed by the Finnish start-up Frameright and the news agency EFE, ranked as the first news agency in Spanish and the fourth in the world.

The initiative aimed to enable content creators to know what they publish and how the content is being shown to the public. Image files contain information that is not visible to regular viewers. It is called embedded metadata. In the metadata, a lot of useful information about the image file can be stored. The idea is to use such information to enable flexible image handling by setting specific coordinates that the receiving system can decode. Saving this information inside the image file makes it possible to gather everyone around the same drawing table, even when working remotely.

Deliverables: Article describing the Initiative’s work and results – What we learned during Stars4Media 2020 | by Marina Ekroos | Frameright | Oct, 2020 (language: English).

Download the presentation (pdf) and watch the video here.

Black City Stories

Initiative formed by three journalists from Austria, the UK and Portugal. The goal of the initiative was to initiate a solution-oriented media platform dedicated to Black People living in Europe. The initiative was committed to investigating in-depth Black Lived Experiences, breaking down the systems and contexts of structural racism and its ties with other forms of social disparities, and amplifying the successes, strategies, and solutions created.

The initiative produced a multimedia website with in-depth multimedia interviews with victims of racism, plus background information in order to help media consumers better to understand some faces of institutional racism within European cities (parallels and differences).

Deliverables: https://blackcitystories.org/ (language: English).

Learn more via this presentation (pdf) and check out the video here.

On the run from the past

Initiative formed by Centro di Giornalismo Permanente (Italy), Street Press (France), El Salto (Spain). The Initiative “On the run from the past” is part of Archivio Desaparecido, a multimedia archive on which the participants have been working for more than a year.

During the southern American dictatorships of the late 1900s, tens of thousands of people have lost their lives due to state-sanctioned terrorism. To suppress internal opposition, the army had built hundreds of extermination camps, whose victims were kidnapped, tortured, killed and then vanished. When the regimes were toppled, many army members were put on trial. To run from the law, many of those people have fled to Europe thanks to their heritage. The Initiative “On the run from the past” follows their stories. Following extensive research, four cases were investigated. Additionally, the team members interviewed the victims and family members of those who have disappeared, the lawyers involved in the trials, past and present. Watch the video here and learn more via this presentation (pdf).

Deliverables:

More co-financed initiatives

Participant(s): Catalina Guerrero, Sofia Branco

Media organisation(s): The news agency EFE (Spain) and the news agency LUSA (Portugal)

Summary: The initiative consisted of exchanging knowledge and experiences in order to organise a real debate, sponsored, on a topic of European interest designed to reach a multinational, multilingual audience. Based on this experience, the applicants drew conclusions from the results achieved and developed a model of organisation and coverage of this kind of “European” debates and produced a code of conduct for handling sponsored information. Download the presentation (pdf).

Deliverables (in Spanish and Portuguese – subtitles in English):

  • Debates on the impact of COVID19 on European tourism
  • Code of Conduct (ethical guidelines for sponsored events)

Participant(s): Elodie Emery, Ariane Papeians, Margherita Bocchi

Media organisation(s): Live Magazine Belgium (BE), Arts for (IT)

Summary: The Initiative aimed to educate, entertain and develop trust between the media and the general public. It created a media literacy toolkit aimed at educators, students and media literacy professionals in 2 languages (French and Italian). This was a new spin-off on the award-winning Live Mag Academy program in France which has so far involved 1730 students, 75 teachers and 36 journalists. Download the presentation (pdf).

Deliverables: comprehensive storytelling workshops programme aimed at 13 to 18-year-old, impact evaluation sheet, interactive videos made by journalists explaining the way they work.

Participant(s): Carlos Carnicero Urabayen; Nick Malkoutzis

Media organisation(s): Agenda Pública (ES); Macropolis (GR)

Summary: The initiative aimed to bring “the Future is Blue”, a weekly newsletter analysing European and economic affairs, which started in 2019, to the next level. The participants did weekly video-talks, giving to experts the opportunity to share their insights on camera. The partnership with Macropolis helped reach broader audiences and benefited from the extensive network of EU experts that Macropolis has.

Deliverable: Videos created during the initiative available on these channels.

Participant(s): Paloma Scharfhausen, Alfredo Casares, Esther Barrio, Carmen Dumitrescu, Stefan Onica, Raul Sanchez Costa, Bogdan Mircea Neagu, Catalina Mihai, Sebastian-Alin Rotaru

Media organisation(s): Compromiso Empresarial (ES), Freedom House Foundation Romania (RO), Euractiv Romania (RO)

Summary: Building on the Coronavirus crisis, the aim of the project was to attract donors and contributors interested in supporting constructive, positive and reality-based journalism, to strengthen the quality of the editorial content and to help create new sources of revenues. It reinforced the independence and sustainability of the organisations involved.

Participant(s): Safouane Abdessalem Media organisation(s): Cafébabel (France) and radio Arabel (Belgium) 

Summary: The idea was to create radio content by dealing with a problem (economic, social, environmental) and providing a solution by talking about an initiative that has been taken in Europe to solve the problem. The podcast covered a European story in French, from different perspectives: “Idées d’Europe, la chronique des solutions”.

Participant(s): Floris Daelemans, Benjamin Poels, Henrik Vandeput, Loic De Visscher, Hugo Ortiz, Benoit Leloutre, Morten Brandstrup

Media organisation(s): VRT (BE), RTBF (BE), TV2 Denmark (DK)

Summary: The initiative aimed at using a solution approach commonly found in the creative industry and digital arts in order to apply it to live production technologies. This initiative created a community-driven software framework for media production and technology innovators that enables the rapid design, testing, and validation of new smart services for live production scenarios in a collaborative, cost-effective and scalable way. Download the presentation (pdf).

Participant(s): Leen Segers, Maelle Quevillard, Maxence Koch, Pol Fortuny

Media organisation(s): LucidWeb (BE) and EURACTIV (NL)

Summary: The initiative’s goal was to create a citizen engagement tool to debunk and demystify the European Union, its Institutions, via WebAR. Several buildings in Brussels can now be “scanned” to instantly get insights into the site’s objectives and how the European Union is contributing to its activities to reach its goals. The collaboration has been strong, multidisciplinary and led to an innovative solution for bridging the gap between citizens and EU Institutions. Markers can be found on the Brussels buildings listed on the website. Learn more via the presentation (pdf).

Deliverable: https://eoscar.euractiv.com/

Participant(s): Kim Brice, Mar Cabra, Aldara Maritegui, Miguel Cabra

Media organisation(s): Freelancers

Summary: The initiative aimed to address the immediate and long-term physical, mental and emotional health of journalists, who are among the frontline responders to the global public health crisis. Focusing on preventative strategies to mitigate the threat of depression, burnout or other stress-related ailments, the initiative created an online space that offers journalists practical tools & ongoing support to navigate the COVID-19 emergency, on the topics of stress management and digital overload. Journalists learned techniques they can use in their daily lives, for example by meeting with the Initiative’s team weekly, to practice specific stress management techniques and exchange information about what they find challenging. Deliverables: https://theselfinvestigation.com/ (languages: English and Spanish). Learn more via this presentation (pdf).

Participant(s): Elena Herrero Beaumont, Concepción Sacristán, Verena Ringler, Katharina Kropshofer, Andrea Menapace, Flaminia Delle Cese

Media organisation(s): Fundación Compromiso y Transparencia (ES), Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights (IT), European Commons (AT)

Summary: Use transparency and governance are effective tools to build integrity in the media sector in EU countries and reinforce trust among the general public. In Spain, the initiative produced the ranking of media companies as in previous editions, including a detailed analysis of  PRISA’s governance and its impact on editorial integrity.  In Italy and in Austria, it did the preliminary groundwork to undertake the ranking in these two jurisdictions. This groundwork includes a sample of media companies, the identification of best practices associated with the media integrity indicators developed by Fundación Compromiso y Transparencia and a reflection on the applicability of these indicators in their respective jurisdictions and ultimately across the EU. They completed the report with an analysis of the transparency and governance of the five major media companies in the US and in the UK. The ideal of media integrity can be reached. The main conclusion is that when it comes to governance and transparency, there is a big room for improvement in EU media companies.

Deliverables: A report in English with a comparative analysis of transparency and governance practices in media companies located in Spain, Italy, Austria, the United Kingdom and the United States. Download the presentation (pdf).

Participant(s): Michele Calamaio; Giuseppe Papalia; Piotr Maciej Kaczynski (Onet.pl) Media organisation(s): Total EU Video Production (Belgium) and Secolo Trentino (Italy)

Summary: This storytelling project consists of a photo, video and narrative journalistic reportage focused on the phenomenon of human journey linked to migrations and the current climate change issues. A deep journalistic analysis of the topic was put into practice by working out together the reality of the war conditions, the poor administration of economy finances and the climate change consequences straight on the field.

Learn more on this initiative via this presentation (pdf).

Article “It’s not a sin to talk about migration” published on VoxEurop.

Participant(s): Bea Bakó; Martin Bukovics

Media Organisation(s): Azonnali (Hungary) and Transindex (Romania)

Summary: The initiative aimed to illustrate to what extent are the attitudes of ordinary people similar or different to the political narratives about the Trianon treaty and memory politics, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. Through this perspective, the reportage contributed to a better understanding between the citizens of the two countries (Hungary and Romania). The outcomes of the Initiative are videos and written materials with photos. Download the presentation (pdf).

Participant(s): Pamina Falck
Media organisation(s): Näringslivets medieinstitut (Sweden); Börsen (Denmark)
Summary: The main target of this initiative was to investigate how European news media manage the quality assessment of journalism. Näringslivets medieinstitut (NMI) is one of few think tank-funded organisations that provide evaluations of journalism at the Swedish national level. NMI is funded by “The Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation”, financed by the confederation of Swedish enterprise. Through this initiative, the participants learned more from a European comparative approach in media analysis.

Participant(s): India Bouquerel, Bernadette Kuiper, Vera Born

Media organisation(s): Live Magazine France (FR), Impact Makers

Summary: The initiative aimed to produce financially sustainable online events with journalists giving illuminating insights into the craft of journalism. The idea was to migrate successful live events to create a new format of online journalism, testing out ways to let the audience discover more context around a story — how the story was produced, how it fits into a larger narrative or the editorial values that back the journalism while designing a new membership model.

Participant(s): Mariana Barbosa, Juliana Santos, Ximena Villagrán, Miriam Burges, Itziar Bernaola

Media organisation(s): Associação Chicas Poderosas Portugal (PT), Chicas Poderosas Spain (ES), Newtral (ES)

Summary: Chicas Poderosas launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) at the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas on female leadership in the media. Without an additional approach, the women journalists in the addressed communities didn’t follow the course, as MOOC dropout rates are as high as 96%. The coronavirus crisis didn’t help with MOOC completion either, as journalists were busier than ever. In order to solve this, live meetings with trainers were created to follow the MOOC contents.  These “immersion sessions” were an opportunity to watch videos together and also to answer questions and build networks.

Deliverable: Read the Medium article here

Participant(s): Alexandra Haderlein, Niko Möls, Alexander Zitzke, Tav Klitgaard

Media organisations: Freelance (Germany), cooperating with the “Constructive Journalism Institute” of the Aarhus University (Denmark) and Zetland

Summary: The participant developed an online magazine for millennials, proposing new approaches to generate social impact in local communities, the city and the region.

  • a tidy web-surface, where you don’t feel buried in a mass of news
  • constructive journalism strictly on a local base
  • told on modern digital channels
  • engaging the audience on a wide range

Download the presentation (pdf)

Participant(s): Monica Pelliccia, Elena Ledda, Andreu Quesada Baños

Media organisation(s): Freelance (IT, ES)

Summary: This initiative investigated the issue of gender-based violence in times of Coronavirus in Europe through a series of podcasts. The results presented the network-based resilience alternatives and solutions carried out by women and for women before this crisis. The journalistic work subverted the generally stereotyped and superficial narrative common in the media by giving voice to women committed to finding collective solutions, during an emergency outbreak.

Learn more via this presentation (pdf). Listen to the 3 episodes of this podcast:

Episode 1: Feminist protests in Europe in spite of social isolation

Episode 2: Feminist on-line proposals before male-chauvinist violence in times of pandemic

Episode 3: Off-line collective responses to the crisis in Spain and Italy