Audience-Engaged Journalism Grants

Reach your audience in new ways

Media outlets from 10 Balkan and Visegrad countries are invited to apply for grants, training, mentoring, and access to BIRN’s innovative audience-engagement digital tool.

Apply for the Grants:

What are Audience Engaged Journalism Grants?

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) calls on media outlets to involve their audiences in reporting by applying for Audience-Engaged Journalism Grants.

The Audience-Engaged Journalism Grants are part of the project Media Innovation Europe: Independence Through Sustainability (MIE). This two-year initiative is led by the International Press Institute (IPI) and its consortium partners, The Fix Foundation, BIRN and Thomson Media (TM). The project focuses on building networks, providing consultancy and offering guidance to participating newsrooms.

The first edition of Media Innovation Europe was launched in June 2022 to invigorate the European ecosystem for independent and local journalism. As part of this initiative, media outlets produced a range of audience-engaged stories, some of which you can read here:

What does the training cover?

Grants for individual stories of up to €4,000.
Grants for cross-border stories of up to €8,000.
Four-day online training on audience engagement.
Mentoring throughout the project.
Access to a digital tool to enhance audience engagement.

In this circle BIRN will fund up to nine media outlets to strengthen their reporting and investigate underreported issues within diverse communities. Stories focusing on marginalized communities, youth and women are strongly encouraged.

Media outlets will utilise the audience-engagement tool developed by BIRN to crowdsource, gather and analyse data from their communities. Audience-engaged journalism seeks to bridge the gap between newsrooms and their audiences, transforming journalism into a service that directly responds to the needs of the community.

Selection criteria

Demonstrate a deep understanding of the problem they seek to solve.
Demonstrate a willingness to undertake audience research and find ways to serve new audiences.
A vision of what success would look like with metrics to measure against.
Promotion of quality independent journalism
Capacity to implement the project
Willingness to include diversity and gender equality
Openness to journalism collaborations

General eligibility

Media outlets from the following 10 Balkan and Visegrad countries may apply: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia and Slovakia.

Selection timeline

To learn more about the grants, click HERE to read the full call for applications. After reviewing the information, follow the link to access the application form.

BIRN will also organise two information sessions, and registration is open:

Information session: 3 October 2024 at 9:00 (CET), register HERE.
Information session: 4 November 2024 at 14:00 (CET), registerHERE.

The deadline for application is 27 NOVEMBER 2024.

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09.10.2024