Investigative journalism award to Adrian Mogos

Editors wish succes to the European Fund

By Brigitte Alfter

BRUSSELS– 26 / 2 / 2009 – COMMENT - The Editors Weblog of the World Association of Newspapers has published an interview with me about the European Fund for Investigative Journalism and concludes it’s article saying: “Hopefully they will succeed.” We are grateful for the encouragement from the editors and many others, who contacted us since the launch of the website.

The interesting question posed to me by Emma Heald, editor-in-chief of Editors Weblog, and by quite a few of the others, who reacted to the launch, was the following: Shouldn’t newspapers, shouldn’t existing media fulfill this role? Shouldn’t they pay for the research of quality content?

Ideally? Yes, of course! That would give stable working conditions and continuing coverage of the important subjects. Important according to journalistic principles that is: Journalists – on behalf of their readers – are obliged to play the role of critical observers, scrutinising power in whatever form it occurs.

However the fact is, that classic media are in a state of transition: New platforms provide new challenges on the format-side, powerstructures crossing borders provide new challenges on the content-side – just to mention a few of them tasks to consider.

The European Fund for Investigative Journalism is part of a flock of experiments with alternative funding for quality content these years. And the European Journalismfund has the aim to inspire and strengthen investigative journalism and cross-border journalism.
We are working on growing bigger and more established, of course. However with research grants we can never replace classic media. But we can stimulate good ideas, and we can encourage commitment to do investigative journalism and to work across borders. That’s what we’re trying to.