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Lighthouse Sessions: Call for emerging journalists

Are you an early career journalist aspiring to become a specialist? Do you already have an area of relative expertise (law, migration, politics, defence industry, finance, data) that you’d  like to develop? Have you noticed that some of the biggest investigations being published are collaborations between different media outlets and would you like to get involved?

With the Lighthouse Sessions, we offer the chance to emerging talent to develop these skills and gain exposure to collaborative journalism by working with us on impactful, real-world stories.

Lighthouse Reports  builds newsrooms around topics. These newsrooms are not attached to a single media platform or publisher. They exist to help working journalists tackle the kind of big, complex stories that make a difference — but need a team.

We deploy a wide range of techniques from open-source investigation to Freedom of Information requests and money trails reporting. The results reach the public in the form of award-winning transnational journalism on existing platforms.

The Sessions are a 6-week training course. We invite colleagues we admire and ask them to share their skills and knowledge with a select group of emerging journalists. Participants will get the chance to learn contemporary investigative methods, the tools and guidance to create and manage your own investigation and the opportunity to directly participate in a Lighthouse Reports international newsroom.

The Lighthouse Sessions 2021 will be delivered by: Sarah Stillman, Bashar Deeb, Daniel Howden, Technisette, Paul Holden, Andrew Feinstein, Eva Constantaras, Lise Witteman & Apostolis Fotiadis.

The Sessions will take place once a week over six consecutive weeks from May 11, 2021. They will be followed by a three-week opportunity to test your new skills as a researcher collaborating in a Lighthouse newsroom.

The ideal candidate will be an emerging journalist or early-career professional with some experience in law, politics, migration, technology, defence or corporate finance. Applicants should have fewer than 5 years of full-time, professional journalistic experience. Applicants who are unable to attend the entire program from 11/05/2021 to 15/06/2021 cannot be considered. Candidates should upload a C.V. and a one-page cover letter, including a link to recent articles or work samples that engage with the themes of migration, conflict or corruption. While we anticipate strong interest, participation will be limited to 20, with five places given to journalists from outside the Netherlands in order to broaden the discussions and enable networking.

Participants are expected to contribute 250 euros per person to partly cover the costs of the facilitation of the training and trainer. If the fee represents a serious barrier to joining, send us a message to explain your circumstances and a strictly limited number of waivers may apply.

HOW TO APPLY

Applications are closed. For questions, you can reach us at dora@lighthousereports.nl

TRAINERS

– Bashar Deeb / OSINT

– Technisette / OSINT

– Paul Holden / Money Trails

– Andrew Feinstein / Money Trails

– Eva Constantaras / Data Journalism

– Apostolis Fotiadis / Interrogating Institutions

– Lise Witteman / Interrogating Institutions

– Sarah Stillman / Migration: How to write a compelling story

– Daniel Howden / The editor’s perspective

– Nani Jansen Reventlow / Strategic Litigation

TESTIMONIALS FROM PARTICIPANTS 2020

Ans @AnsBoersma:

“The Lighthouse Sessions opened my eyes to the unprecedented possibilities of journalistic research online. Each session was educational and of a high level. You immediately participate in the team of international researchers. Lighthouse Sessions is the best journalistic training at the moment. So get involved!”

Laura @laurahoogenraad:

“Lighthouse Sessions gives you all kinds of new tools for your journalistic toolbox, from open source investigation, freedom of information requests to money-trail reporting. My participation has allowed me to develop and improve my research skills. We even set up a newsroom ourselves and were able to apply the new methods in practice right away!”

Sylvain:

“The Lighthouse Sessions allowed me to connect with a lot of professionals and get to know and manage very exciting OSINT tools. I used this opportunity to be more comfortable in this journalism environment that was new to me. Besides, our group was invited to create a new Lighthouse Reports newsroom: the #Plastic newsroom. It allowed me to concretely collaborate with a team of journalists on an investigation that was later published in the NRC (Netherlands).”