The European Journalism Centre grants publishers £700k towards innovative development reporting

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The European Journalism Centre has granted seven European publishers a total of £700,000 (€800,000) to foster a new approach to global development coverage.

Society, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, De Volkskrant, VPRO, CNN, ELLE UK and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism will receive approximately £100,000 over the course of next year to create news verticals on selected United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, such as gender equality, zero hunger, and quality education.

The European Publisher Reporting Grants are designed to encourage publishers to use distinctive storytelling ideas, new engaging content forms and emerging data journalism techniques to inform European audiences about development issues and change the way they think about them.

Mathias Müller von Blumencron, editor-in-chief of digital media at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, explained that his team will be using the funds to produce a series on how to feed the world, looking closely at the food industry, analysing topics such as genetic engineering and the distribution of food on a variety of media platforms.

"We see the world population increasing dramatically over the next 10-20 years, and the urgent necessity to feed them all," he said.

"Our core idea is to cover two villages, one in the developing world and one in Germany, and see how they cope with the task to be more efficient in the production of more food. We will compare the two communities, and hope to bring them into a dialogue and see if one can learn from the other."

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism will use its grant money to look into how the rise of superbugs could undermine the world's ability to deliver several of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

"This is potentially the biggest public health problem on the horizon – it will effectively mean that we won't be able to treat common diseases, we won't be able to perform basic surgeries let alone treat cancers with aggressive drugs and Victorian diseases like TB will come back into being," Rachel Oldroyd, managing editor at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, told Journalism.co.uk.

"We've been covering antimicrobial resistance for the past 18 months, but this grant will allow us to do this on a global scale, particularly looking at how the issue is currently affecting people in countries such as India and Bangladesh.

"We will be ambitious in our publishing strategy, using podcasts and infographics to tell this complicated issue in an engaging fashion."

All seven awarded projects will be freely accessible to a national or global online audience without any access barriers or registration, and Journalism.co.uk will follow their progress over the next year.

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