(Berlin, Germany) 16 July 2019 – Hostwriter today announced the 20 journalists selected for the Agora Europe Journalism Grants 2020 program. Journalists will receive direct emergency funding of €500 each in Part I of the program.

A second pool of €3000 in funding is available as research grants in Part II of the program. Following an online kick-off meeting, journalists will be grouped into teams based on their proposed project topics. Journalists will work together within these teams to produce collaborative journalism stories, and they will be expected to publish their stories locally and/or regionally.

The reporting process will be complimented with digital capacity-building activities, mentoring and opportunities to connect with publishers through our network.

“We are thrilled to provide these grants as part of an Emergency Fund for Freelance Journalists in Eastern and Southern Europe, especially as so many journalists are suffering hardships due to the Coronavirus pandemic,” says Tabea Grzeszyk, co-founder and CEO of Hostwriter. “In their applications, journalists told us how they have faced loss of income due to the situation and that some of them have even considered leaving the profession altogether. We are proud to support diverse voices from Eastern and Southern Europe at this difficult time.”

The stories will be translated into English and published in an online dossier by Hostwriter. The online dossier will be released in a digital launch event in late-2020, with a presentation and an open Q&A session with the reporting teams, where lessons from their collaboration will be shared with a wider community of journalists.

The Agora Europe Journalism Grants program is made possible with the support of the European Cultural Foundation (ECF). We are grateful to the European Cultural Foundation for enabling us to turn our planned Agora Program into an emergency support program to help journalists in Eastern and Southern Europe, at a time when freelance journalists are facing severe losses of income due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Selected Journalists in Alphabetical Order (by last name)

  • Petru Botnaru (Moldova)
  • Anastasia Dashko (Ukraine)
  • Alexenia Dimitrova (Bulgaria)
  • Marieta Dimitrova (Bulgaria)
  • Linda Dorigo (Italy)
  • Piotr Drabik (Poland)
  • Maria Dybcio (Poland)
  • Bruno Horta (Portugal)
  • Çağdaş Kaplan (Greece)
  • Marta Kucharska (Poland)
  • Stavros Malichudis (Greece)
  • Silvia Nortes Manjavacas (Spain)
  • Yannia-Orestis Papdimitriou (Greece)
  • Viktorija Pushkina (Ukraine)
  • Zlatko Šarić  (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
  • Irina Sedunova (Russia)
  • Brankica Smiljanić (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
  • Danijela Stanojević (Croatia)
  • Edward Jozef Szekeres (Slovakia)
  • Giacomo Zandonini (Italy)

About Hostwriter:

Hostwriter is an award-winning network that helps journalists to easily collaborate across borders. We currently connect more than 5,200 journalists in more than 150 countries.

We see cross-border journalism as a tool to solve two pressing global challenges: to raise the quality of foreign reporting and to diversify the Western-centric news narrative. By connecting international media professionals, providing training in “Cross-Border Journalism” and launching projects that shed light on unequal power dynamics within the field, Hostwriter powers the collaborative future of journalism that is as diverse as the societies it serves.

Press Contact: Bernadette Geyer, Head of Communications bernadette@hostwriter.org