Dataharvest 2025 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Independent newsrooms are sprouting up all over Europe. They counter the decline in traditional media and the rise of misinformation, but they are still outnumbered and face significant challenges to their survival.
For the first time, we now have knowledge and data about this new sector: The Journalism Value Project (JVP) has over the last two years made a survey of 174 independent newsrooms on 31 countries, produced a 25-episode podcast series about their main challenges and published a white-paper aimed at politicians and funders about the need for public service journalism and the needs, these newsrooms have.
The project has put the spotlight on the societal value of independent journalism and the challenges it faces. Join this session to hear about the state of public interest newsrooms in Europe and hear how the newsrooms and the funders look at future possibilities. Is there a place for these media? Are they a priority for funders or for politicians at national and EU level? Must the newsrooms find their own ways to become sustainable?

One month, you are a reporter in the field working with editors and fact-checkers and with your editor in chief. The next month, you find yourself as a manager, a director or editor yourself and realize that what you’ve learned by being a reporter is not enough any more. You have to deal with legal affairs or staff disagreements, and you must make decisions about other reporters. Listen to two journalists-turned-directors telling how they handled the transition.

Dear participants,

This session has been cancelled due to the speaker's illness. We are sorry for the inconvenience!


One of the biggest threats to a small newsroom is being faced with legal claims or lawsuits that will block publication, soak up all your energy and potentially empty your bank account. Claims may allege violations of privacy, defamation, or breach of confidentiality. In recent years attention has focused on SLAPPs (Strategic Legal Action against Public Participation) that aim to stop you in your tracks, prevent lawful investigations and halt discussion of matters of public interest.
How can you prevent this tactic and be prepared if it's used against you? Where can you go for support and help? Senior legal advisor Flutura Kusari from the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, who has advised media and journalists pre- and post- publication, gives her advice and takes your questions.

As the gap between journalists and the public continues to grow, how can investigative newsrooms convince people that they still matter? “Impact journalism” may be one solution.
For six months, Disclose and Rembobine, two independent news organisations from France, have been collecting best practices to understand how newsrooms around the world monitor, assess and evaluate the echoes of their investigations. This brand new guide to impact journalism, based on 30 interviews with researchers, editors and impact producers, will be presented for the first time at Dataharvest.
Impact provides not only room for hope, but also a promising approach to increasing reader loyalty and foundation support.

This is probably one the most common nightmares for any journalist: you’ve been working for months on an ambitious investigation and, once published, it results in… nothing. To mitigate this, it’s time to develop effective impact strategies, tailored to your newsroom and your resources. During this participatory workshop, inspired by popular education techniques, we will collectively build a realistic impact plan for your next investigation. Whether it involves partnering with stakeholders, getting support from activists or building new editorial formats, we’ll look at several techniques for maximising the reach of your revelations and ensuring they produce impact in the real world.

Funding journalism is a recurring issue. In recent years, we’ve focused a lot on the ’how’: How to phrase an application, how to develop a realistic budget, how to reach out to potential funders. And we’ll continue with that, of course: but the question of how to fund public interest journalism has, if possible, become even more urgent. But we also need a deeper understanding, a shared terminology and fora to discuss these questions.
Brigitte Alfter will talk about the freshly released Arena Paper on fundraising. She is also the author of a GFMD paper on public funding to journalists and has been a speaker at ’Saving Journalism’ events at Columbia University, an annual conference on a wide variety of funding sources and funding models for journalism in our time.
The session will be followed by a fundraising café with advice on your project or for your organisation.

With traditional revenue streams under strain, independent media outlets are turning to innovative models that combine grants, memberships, subscriptions, events, and more. But how does this approach work in practice? What challenges come with balancing diverse income sources?
This session explores the ethics, sustainability, and practicalities of mixed funding. How can outlets develop a long-term strategy while navigating financial and ethical dilemmas? Join us to discuss the opportunities and pitfalls of funding independent journalism in today’s landscape.