Deadline: January 18, 2024
Applications are open for the JournalismFund Investigation Grants for Environmental Journalism 2024. This grant programme supports cross-border teams of professional journalists and/or news outlets to conduct investigations into environmental affairs related to Europe.
While news media and newsrooms still predominantly operate nationally, most power structures and societal and environmental problems transcend national boundaries. This grant programme is therefore aimed at cross-border teams of investigative journalists and newsrooms to investigate and document illegal, unreported and unregulated abuse of nature that involves European affairs in and outside Europe.
Next to investigations of environmental issues that transcend borders, this programme can also support and stimulate comparative investigations into local environmental issues and policies between two or more regions or cities.
Grant
- The total available amount per call to be distributed among all supported investigations will be around €400,000.
Eligibility
- Cross-border teams of at least two journalists and/or news outlets can submit a proposal for a journalistic investigation about an issue that concerns the environment. Only applicants who are legally residing in at least two different countries are permitted to receive funding.
- The applicants must be professional freelance journalists or news outlets. Personal references and/or references to earlier work are essential in that respect. News outlets must be legal entities officially incorporated at least one year before the application deadline of the grant call.
- The investigation proposal must concern cross-border environmental investigative journalism on European affairs, in or outside Europe. This means that the investigation has (also) to be of relevance for Europe. Next to investigations into environmental issues that transcend borders, this grant can also support e.g. comparative investigations into local environmental issues and policies between two or more countries, regions, cities, etc.
- The result of the investigation must be published by at least two professional news outlets in at least two different countries (one in Europe). Letters of intent for publication from at least two professional news outlets are required.
- Investigative journalism published by professional media in any form is eligible, no matter whether print, online, broadcast or cross-media. All journalistic end products qualify for a grant: newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television documentaries and series, photo-reportages and books, podcasts and journalistic non-fiction books.
Assessment Criteria
The jury will assess the applications based on these criteria:
- Environmental angle
- Added value compared to mainstream coverage
- Feasibility
- Experience of the applicants
- Work effort requirement
- Cross-border research and stories
- Networking between countries, pooling research capacity and knowledge
- Watchdog of institutions, policies, money
- Audience engagement strategy
- Quality and rationality of the budget
- Necessity of (co-)funding
Finally, the jury will also take into consideration the variety within the global selection of granted projects. This means diversity in terms of:
- region (both regarding stories and team members)
- topics
- methods and approaches
- publication forms
- team composition
Application
After a one-time registration with your email address, you can access the online application form. You can freely navigate through the form to see which information you need to provide in your application. This includes:
- team members’ details
- information about the intended investigation
- information about the intended publication channels, including letters of intent from news outlets
- a detailed budget, according to the budget template
For more information, visit JournalismFund Investigation Grants.
