The IJ4EU fund has unveiled changes to its Publication Support Scheme, making it easier for journalists to get short-term grants for cross-border investigations that are already underway.
Two updates to the scheme, managed by the European Journalism Centre, promise to increase the number of potential applicants eligible to receive funding for their investigative projects and enable IJ4EU to support a greater variety of stories and teams.
What’s changed?
The IJ4EU partners strongly believe that cross-border, collaborative investigative journalism is central to the sustainability of European democracy. The newly updated criteria, combined with the rapid response nature of the grants provided under the Publication Support Scheme, will enable us to bolster the teams and investigations that need it most.
- Teams of journalists and/or news organisations can now apply for a grant of up to €10,000. We have increased the grant amount from €6,250 to provide more financial support to cover the costs associated with finalising and publishing investigations that are in progress.
- Teams can now be based in only one EU member state or EU candidate country, provided that they are collaborating on an investigation of cross-border relevance that will be published in at least two countries (at least one of which must be an EU member state). It is no longer compulsory for teams to be physically based in two different countries.
The rest of the criteria remain unchanged. Please carefully read the updated criteria and FAQs and follow the steps to start an application.
Is the Publication Support Scheme a good fit for your project?
The Publication Support Scheme is designed to provide short-term, additional funding for completing and publishing investigations that are already underway.
PSS grants of up to €10,000 can be used to cover salary and human resource costs, research-related costs, translation and travel costs.
Some examples of what the funding can be used for include:
- conducting additional research or interviews for a story;
- translating an investigation into additional languages;
- publishing the investigation in additional news outlets;
- producing multimedia content to accompany the final investigation (e.g. podcast, video, data visualisations);
- marketing material and dissemination activities to promote the final investigative project.
The scenarios above are by no means exhaustive. They are based on examples from the investigations that our team has already shortlisted under the Publication Support Scheme in the last few months, as well as from feedback we have received from investigative journalists.
A full list of the cross-border projects that have been funded so far through the Publication Support Scheme will be published soon.
The Publication Support Scheme is accepting proposals on a rolling basis until 18 September 2020. Applicants can expect a quick decision about the outcome of their application.
New investigations that have not yet started and those that are in their very early stages are eligible for support under IJ4EU’s Investigation Support Scheme. Eleven grantees have been selected as part of the first round of this scheme, and a second round of funding will open in August 2020.
This text reflects the author’s view and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.