The European Journalism Centre, supported by a two-year, $1.5 million grant from the CUNY J-School’s News Integrity Initiative, today launched its Engaged Journalism Accelerator, which will provide grants, coaching, and peer-to-peer learning for community-powered newsrooms across Europe.
EJC poured months of careful research into designing the Accelerator to understand the specific, ongoing needs of European newsrooms. Notably, they learned that the most promising models for sustainability are the ones which have “community engagement at the center of their ownership, reporting, distribution, impact and revenue.”
As a result, the Accelerator will boost 10-15 of these promising, public-focused newsrooms with grants and comprehensive coaching and evaluation, while also bringing innovative community engagement strategies, business development support, and peer-to-peer learning to the wider news ecosystem EJC serves. (See EJC’s announcement for the full Accelerator details.)
The Accelerator will also receive funding and mentoring support from Civil, a platform journalists can use to launch “newsrooms” over which they retain full editorial and business autonomy. If you’re curious to learn more about Civil, you can read their newsletter.
If you are interested in following along with EJC and the Engaged Journalism Accelerator, read more about their work here.
And all this year, the News Integrity Initiative is celebrating innovative, community-focused journalism (case studies, toolkits, provocative interviews and more) on our Year of Listening website.