Independent newsrooms across Europe are facing a tough reality: grant funding is becoming more competitive, short-term, and unpredictable. This panel will explore the challenges small newsrooms encounter when forced to downsize, and how they can restructure teams, workflows, and output to continue producing quality journalism under financial pressure. We’ll also examine how one can try to secure new revenue streams - and how to pursue them without compromising editorial independence-and about the strain that sudden influxes of one-off projects and grants can place on already overstretched teams. Join us to discuss these challenges, share experiences, and learn practical, transferable strategies.
Catarina Carvalho is the editor of Mensagem de Lisboa, a community media in the Portuguese city of Lisbon. She founded Mensagem after several years in the traditional press namely as executive editor of the historic Diário de Notícias. She pivoted toward a more community-centric... Read More →
Elisabetta is a science, data, and investigative journalist.
She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Facta.eu, an Italian independent media outlet that applies the scientific method to journalism and promotes science journalism as a cornerstone of democratic participation.
This presentation will examine various methodologies and share practical tips — as well as common challenges — when working with freedom of information (FOI) requests in “difficult” contexts. These include investigations into closed institutions such as the police or prison system, requests made under time constraints, or cases complicated by non-transparent governmental bodies.
Drawing on examples from the presenters’ work in Portugal and Turkey, we will discuss how to craft precise and effective FOI requests under pressure, handle incomplete or evasive responses from authorities, and leverage the human connection to follow up informally and obtain information.
We will also discuss how strategic litigation, formal complaints to state regulatory bodies, and public pressure campaigns can be used to compel institutions to release information. We invite FOI practitioners and FOI-curious participants to attend the session and share their own examples of successes (and failures) during the discussion.
Investigative journalist, focused on long-form audio narratives. I work mostly with FOI and state archives, to research policing, prisons, and the courts. At Fumaça, I share fundraising responsability for our non-profit, membership backed experiment on non-hierarchical newsroom... Read More →
Elif Ince is an Istanbul based freelance journalist. Her reporting on urban and environmental issues has received awards from Turkey's Progressive Journalists Association (ÇGD), the Chamber of Architects, the Chamber of Urban Planners and People's Houses (Halkevleri). She... Read More →
Receiving a noteworthy tip is an achievement in itself, but it's almost never the end of the story. Where does your Signal application live? How can you safely share and store leaked documents? Oh, and what if they are -- gasp --malware? This is where the concept of OPSEC (Operational Security) comes into play.
However, discussing OPSEC practices can sometimes feel too detached from the reality of a working journalist. In this session, we will strive to make things more grounded. We'll conduct a live simulation of a leak throughout its lifecycle. We'll discuss OPSEC in practice and demonstrate how to use:- a hardened phone and PC OS (GrapheneOS / QubesOS), and- some lesser-known security and privacy tools (e.g., Dangerzone, Orbot, BlinkComparison) Finally, we'll go beyond mere tool usage and share tips and lessons learned from past OPSEC failures and wins.
This is an intermediate session on the subject of security hygiene. We don't assume any background in engineering or security, and it should be approachable to anyone familiar with some basic concepts (encryption, anonymity, threat modeling) and tools (Signal, Tor), which we will use as the foundation for the rest of the demonstration.
