In view of the grant programme collaboration between our Flemish Fonds Pascal Decroos grant programme and the Flemish Filip Decock foundation, Journalismfund.eu will start offering its expertise to other organisations that want to support investigative journalism through research grants.
Journalismfund.eu’s core business is and will always be to stimulate independent, in-depth quality journalism in Europe. We do this in many different ways, the most important being by offering working grants to journalists to do research for a project they can’t get financed in any other way
In September 2014 we’ll be teaming up with another organisation for the first time to launch a special ‘custom’ working grant application call with them. The Flemish Filip Decock foundation offers two working grants (one of €1,500 and one of €3,000) for journalism projects focusing on their specific field of interest: the third world.
This is what the collaboration looks like: laying down the application rules and selecting jury members to assess the different projects is done by the Filip Decock foundation. Journalismfund.eu supports the foundation in communicating about the application call to relevant audiences and in handling the application process. All applications are submitted via our website, where a very detailed application form for investigative journalism projects already exists. Journalists now have the option to choose whether they are applying for a ‘traditional’ Pascal Decroos Fund working grant or for the new Stichting Filip Decock working grants.
We realise that there is a danger in offering this service and want to stress that it is not a ‘journalism for sale’ concept. We have always fought for independent investigative journalism and will continue to do so. Therefore, one of the conditions for collaboration for us is that the applications are assessed by an independent jury. Still, different ethical views on this might exist across Europe. We leave it to journalists themselves to decide whether or not they want to apply for these ‘custom’ grants. In any case, any money we might make from this is invested directly in our general work of supporting investigative journalism in Europe, which we have been doing for over fifteen years.
(Photo © Alessandro Prada, slightly cropped)
