European Journalism Centre

• 1. Introduction

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  The European Journalism Centre sits in Maastricht, a city in the Dutch province of Limburg. It calls itself an independent, non-profit institute, and its name suggests a newsroom or a school. It is neither of those things in the usual sense. Its work is aimed at people who already have careers in the news business and want to keep growing. That raises a few questions. Who does an institute like this actually serve? Who pays for its projects? And who has steered it over the years?

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• 2. Training for Working Journalists

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  Mid-career journalists and media professionals are the people the institute was built to help. Its stated aim is to give them further training once their first years in the trade are behind them. The institute also takes on a second role at the European level. Media companies, professional organisations, journalism schools and government bodies sometimes want to start activities or projects of their own. For them, the centre acts as both a partner and an organiser. A newsroom or a ministry does not have to build such an effort alone. The next chapter looks at one project where that arrangement involved a major philanthropic funder.

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• 3. Grants and Funders

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  The Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant once took on an extensive research project about food around the world. To do it, the paper received the European Publishers' Long-term Reporting Grant. The money did not originate with the centre itself. The European Journalism Centre was financed for this grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This is a typical example of how the institute works. It sits between a philanthropic funder and a news organisation, and it helps turn long-term reporting into something a paper can afford to attempt.

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• 4. The News Impact

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  In 2017, the centre launched a programme called 'The News Impact'. Its idea was to gather hands-on professionals who might tutor future journalists. The tutoring was meant to centre on three things: innovation, the tools of journalism, and technology. The programme usually consists of several events each year. It is powered by the Google News Initiative. That makes it a case where a technology company's initiative backs training for the very people who report on the news.

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• 5. The Directors

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  Lars Boering has led the institute as director since 2021. He is a Dutch photographic journalist and advisor, so his background is in images as well as words. His predecessor in the post was Wilfried Ruetten, who was director from 2006 to 2016. Ruetten also became a board member of the Global Editors Network in April 2011. Before that, he headed digital television at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzburg, Austria. Earlier still, he worked in German public and private broadcasting as a reporter and producer, including at ARD and the RTL Group. He had also worked in journalism education. That blend of broadcasting and teaching fits the institute's focus on training working professionals.

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