Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
A year in, The Guardian’s European edition contributes 15% of the publisher’s pageviews
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
March 16, 2011, 2 p.m.

Collaboration, an investigative reporting network, and the development of Farmsubsidy.org

Editor’s Note: Our sister publication Nieman Reports is out with its spring issue, which spotlights the efforts of reporters trying to uncover corruption. We’re highlighting a few entries that connect with subjects we follow in the Lab, but go read the whole issue. In this piece, Nils Mulvad, an editor at Kaas & Mulvad, talks about collaboration and networked reporting on farm subsidies in the EU.

Farm subsidies in Europe are a natural topic for journalists. Investigative reporters know what comes from following the money. Since close to half of the European Union’s total budget goes toward subsidizing agriculture, trying to obtain information about these payments seemed like a good direction to head in — holding the potential that we’d find important stories waiting to be told.

When Farmsubsidy.org was formed in 2005, its goal was to get access to information on who gets what in farm subsidies from the E.U. and why. Already, in Denmark, I had managed to get this data, and in the United Kingdom, Jack Thurston had won some legal battles that provided him with access to these figures. As the two of us corresponded about our efforts, we decided to take this project to the larger stage of the entire E.U. Danish journalist Brigitte Alfter had already requested this E.U. data in 2004 so she joined forces with Jack and me in co-founding Farmsubsidy.org.

Our investigative network included people from various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) along with journalists. After we started to file legal challenges to get access to this data in the Netherlands, Poland, France and Germany, the E.U. Commission and the European Council decided that all member states would be required to publish on their websites information about who receives farm subsidies and how much they receive.

Keep reading »

POSTED     March 16, 2011, 2 p.m.
Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
A year in, The Guardian’s European edition contributes 15% of the publisher’s pageviews
After the launch of Guardian Europe, one-time donations from European readers increased by 45%.
Press Forward awards $20 million to 205 small local newsrooms
In response to the volume and quality of applications, Press Forward doubled the funding and number of grantees for this open call.
Midwestern news nonprofit The Beacon shuts down its Wichita newsroom
“We’ve realized that we can’t do it all, and have made the decision to no longer have a staffed newsroom in Wichita.”