NoNewsIsBadNews

No News is Bad News was a five-year programme (2016-2020) within EJC's Strategic Partnership with Free Press Unlimited, supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We were working to professionalise and strengthen journalists and media organisations in 17 countries so that they can serve as drivers and catalysts for change.

Supporting a free press and access to credible information globally has been a core tenet of the EJC’s mission from day one. Working beyond Europe’s borders, we developed sustainable projects, knowing the positive/vital impact on citizens’ lives that independent journalism must play. From news literacy to accountability journalism projects, the European Journalism Centre has decades of experience in Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and beyond.

Projects included working with the Bolivian Ministry of Education to embed media literacy into the national curricula and the Fundo Spotlight, which partnered with Fundación para el Periodismo to support investigative journalism projects at the community level. Our core strategy was to empower and enable local partners to, directly and indirectly, lobby and influence policy actors and decision-makers.

The European Journalism Centre’s commitment to diversity is focused on encouraging media content production that features underrepresented voices from across communities. To this end, we worked in sub-Saharan Africa with the Netherlands' key LGBT rights group, COC, to train journalists on new approaches to reporting minority communities and avoiding stereotypes.

We partnered with Foreign Policy Interrupted across the global south to raise the visibility of female journalists by showcasing their work on innovative platforms. One product we created with our group of female journalists was “Interruptrr Africa”, a monthly online newsletter initiated in Kenya in 2017 with reports by female journalists on security, science, terrorism, and politics.