30 aspiring journalists join newsrooms across Europe

During a period of 8 weeks, the 2021 cohort of the Google News Initiative Fellowship will take their places at one of the 30 participating newsrooms throughout Europe. Spread across 14 countries, young aspiring journalists from diverse backgrounds will get the chance to be fully immersed in the newsroom experience. The Fellows will focus on developing skills in areas ranging from technology, multimedia and design to data, audience development and fact-checking.

This year, with over 2,000 applications, interest in the Fellowship grew to an all-time high. From these applications, the participating newsrooms carefully selected the Fellow they considered to best meet their needs and focus. These young professionals will spend their time at the newsroom gaining practical experience, building lifelong connections and kick-starting their careers.

The work of the Fellows will be beneficial to the newsrooms as well, this year arguably even more than ever. Over the past 1,5 years, newsrooms have not only faced a pandemic but also endured financial challenges. Overcoming difficulties like these allow for unique opportunities to push innovation and technology and to try out new things. By joining newsrooms at a time like this, Fellows can use their backgrounds, expertise and enthusiasm to enhance these processes.

Ensuring diversity

At the European Journalism Centre, we take diversity, equity and inclusion very seriously and incorporate it throughout our projects. For the Fellowship, we have done so by providing newsrooms with training on diversity, equity and inclusion. During this training, we addressed a lot of challenges newsrooms and the wider media landscape are facing regarding these topics and newsrooms naturally discussed opportunities to help improve recruitment techniques and adopt best practices in the newsroom.

Meet the Fellows

The GNI Fellowship experience will equip our Fellows with the training, network and resources they need to contribute to building a thriving news ecosystem, with an innovative and collaborative spirit. The 2021 cohort consists of a group of young professionals with a wide range of backgrounds that include communications, creative computing, investigative journalism, and more.

Here are the GNI Fellows of this year and the main areas they will focus on:

Data journalism, interactives & multimedia

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: Julia Bellan (Germany)

‘’I am looking forward to connecting with young journalists from all over Europe to share knowledge and experiences.’’ — Julia Bellan

Zeit Online: Jakob Bauer (Germany)

Tagesspiegel (Innovation Lab): Nico Buettner (Germany)

‘’After my Fellowship, I hope to have a better network outside of academia and some more experience with text analysis and data visualisation.’’ — Nico Buettner

Helsingin Sanomat: Rosanna Manninen (Finland)

De Volkskrant: Anke van den Broek (Netherlands)

‘’I am looking forward to writing for my favourite news medium since childhood!’’ — Anke van den Broek

The Guardian: Zala Šeško (UK)

Financial Times: Claire Buchan (UK)

Reach PLC: Clara Murray (UK)

IlSole24ORE: Andre Barbosa Calderolli (Italy)

‘’I am really excited about the prospect of applying, exploring, and developing the interests and skills I have acquired both as a journalist and a designer so far. Not to mention the possibility of connecting with people as enthusiastic about journalism as myself, and, together, think of new paths for it.’’ — Andre Barbosa Calderolli

Dziennik Gazeta Prawna: Bartłomiej Chlabicz (Poland)

Czech Radio: Anna Košlerová (Czech Republic)

Der Standard: Robin Kohrs (Austria)

Vice Belgium: Amée Zoutberg (Belgium)

France 24 — Les Observateurs — Julia Galan (France)

Product, design, and audience engagement

Der Spiegel: Laura Badura (Germany)

Yle Kioski: Anumita Goswami (Finland)

Expressen: Robin Andersson (Sweden)

‘’After my Fellowship, I’m hoping to have taken my storytelling and presentation abilities to the next level as well as becoming a much more diverse video editor.’’ — Robin Andersson

Euronews: Talía Olvera Martinez Talía Olvera Martinez (France)

‘’As a Fellow, I hope to gain experience in project management, especially in how to negotiate needs between editorial and journalistic production work and budget management.’’ — Talía Olvera Martinez

La Repubblica: Andrea Galliano (Italy)

Verification, fact-checking, and solutions journalism

Agence France-Presse AFP: Astrig Agopian (France)

‘’I am looking forward to learning new skills and meeting interesting people’’ — Astrig Agopian

Nice-Matin: Clara de Antoni (France)

Newtral: Cristina Alonso (Spain)

‘’I would like to learn how to find stories throughout data and how to visualise them, as well as be able to properly verify the information I work with.’’ — Cristina Alonso

Wysokie Obcasy Magazine (Agora): Sandra Zakrzewska (Poland)

TheJournal.IE: Emma Taggart (Ireland)

Full Fact: Gautam Kishore Shahi (UK)

‘’Doing a fellowship with Google is an exciting opportunity. I look forward to experiencing the real-time experience in the newsroom.’’ — Gautam Kishore Shahi

Heidi News / Geneva Solutions: Irene Velicer (Switzerland)

‘’I’m excited to work in a close-knit team of journalists and to interview lots of interesting people.’’ — Irene Velicer

Diversity, equity & inclusion

Guitinews (StreetPress): Misia Lerska (France)

‘’I am looking forward to meeting other Fellows and learning more on how to run a multicultural and multilingual media platform.’’ — Misia Lerska

Gal-Dem: SJ Zhang

Eldiario.es: Emili Serra (Spain)

‘’During the Fellowship, I am most excited to get in touch with young journalists from around Europe to share values, points of view and challenges. Because, after all, the future of journalism is on us.’’ — Emili Serra

Welcome session and boot camp

To prepare the Fellows for their time at the newsrooms we are organising a welcome session. During this session, the Fellows will be able to connect with each other. Besides that, they will also receive a workshop from the Google News Initiative on Google Tools — something that will definitely come in handy during their time at the newsrooms. After the Fellowship, we will organise a two-day boot camp where Fellows will receive training that will prepare them to kick-start their career in the journalism work field.

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The GNI Fellowship is funded by the Google News Initiative and managed by the European Journalism Centre.

We wish all the Fellows the very best for their Fellowship and look forward to meeting them all soon!

If you have any questions or would like to get in touch, you can write to us at hello@journalismfellowships.eu