Living in Copenhagen covering Europe

Brigitte Alfter, journalist

brigitte@alfter.dk

Copenhagen office:

Dokumentargruppen / Klosterstræde 23 A 2 / DK 1157 København

Tlf: +45 40 82 21 68
Fax: +32 2416 6059

Alternative mail: brig@mail.dk

Skype: brigittedk

Twitter: Hackette7

Work:

Freelance journalist in Copenhagen since 2008.

Previous to that I lived in Brussels for four years working as EU-correspondent for Danish daily Information.

The Watchdog Blog at Euobserver.com About transparency and quality journalism in Europe /blogger

GrænseOverskridende About crossborder- and European journalism, methods and funding / blogger

Funding European journalism www.journalismfund.eu /co-founder and director

Freedom of Information in Europe www.wobbing.eu /co-founder and editor

Funding investigative journalism in the Balkans, the Ukraine and the Caucasus www.i-scoop.org /co-founder and Danish manager

Transparency on EU funds to farming www.farmsubsidy.org /co-founder

International Consortium for Investigative Journalists http://www.publicintegrity.org/icij// member

Affiliations:

Danish Associaton for Investigative Journalism /chairperson of the International Committee /board member since 2002

German association for investigative journalism Netzwerk Recherche/board member responsible for international contacts 2007-2011

Danish Association of Journalists /member since 1993

Det kolde gys /member

Awards:

2011: We win the Overseas Press Club of America Award for Looting the Seas with our ICIJ team.

2011: We win the US Tom Renner Award for “Looting the Seas” with our ICIJ team.

2010: On a finalist team at the 2009 IRE award with the Climate Change Lobby, a global research led by the ICIJ.

2008: In the run-up to the German Henri-Nannen-Award along with Hans-Martin Tillack for articles in German magazine Stern.

2007: Winner of the IRE Freedom of Information Award along with Nils Mulvad and Jack Thurston, the other two co-founders of Farmsubsidy.org.

2006: Nominated for the Danish Cavling award along with Nils Mulvad for a series of articles on EU farmsubsidies.

What I’ve been up to recently:

May 2011: We have founded the European Datajournalism network. Fabulous and inspiring meeting in Brussels with datajournalists, CAR journalists, wobbers and programmers. Next meeting planned for early May 2012. Infrastructure is on the way, drop me a mail, if you want to join the mailinglist.

April 2011: Slow journalism is emerging in several countries at a time. In 2011 alone three new slow-journalism magazines were launched: Plot in Norway, Kontext in Germany and Delayed Gratification in the United Kingdom. Three years ago Filter opened in Sweden – and now Filter pays “a fine dividend” to its shareholders. I did a short radio piece on this new development, hear the last 10 minutes of DR P1 dokumentar.

April 2011: Wonderful appraisal of cross-border journalism: Looting the Seas wins two fine American awards. The IRE’s Tom Renner Award and the Overseas Press Club’s Whitman Bassow Award. Danish journalist magazine Journalisten sums up, and Danish Radio uses the research as example when it broadcast about cross-border journalism.

April 2011: The President, the most recent documentary by filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, has been shown in Denmark as the first country. It was a pleasure to be on Christoffer’s team for this film. His storytelling capacity is enriching and inspiring particularly when he turns to a subject like the European constitution.

March 2011: Relaunched http://www.wobbing.eu/, the website and meeting place for journalists, who use freedom of information acts in Europe. Wobbing Europe is a project I have run for the Belgian Pascal Decroos Fund since 2007.  Since the Winter 2010/11 I have found a great co-editor, Staffan Dahllöf, who is an experienced European journalist.

March 2011: Published an article about networking journalism in Europe in the spring edition of the Nieman Report at Harvard. Two other Danes contributed too and several precious colleagues from Southeastern and Eastern Europe, read more in Danish at Journalisten’s blog.

February 2011: Been interviewed twice by P1 on Danish public Radio DR. Last week about our cross-border research on the black market in Bluefin Tuna. And in November about the current debate among EU ministers on who should enjoy  farmsubsidies in the coming years.

January 2011: Interest for networking journalism is growing – that’s so encouraging! Good start of new year. Now a German magazine interviewed me about networking for the story on the black market in Bluefin Tuna.
December 2010: The EU is still working its way towards public-service journalism. On the 13th of December the European Parliament’s attempt to install public-service research grants was postponed for a year.

November 2010: Global threat, global research: After months of research in a 12 journo team and further weeks and weeks of editing and cross-checking, the global ICIJ research about the black market of bluefin tuna has now been published. Story went out in the BBC, the EUobserver.com and numerous others.

October 2010: The emancipated journalist! A provocative and important thought about journalists’ role in the future, written by a precious colleague, Ides Debruyne. Read about it in English and in Danish.

October 2010: I was asked to join the jury of the Waaris.eu/Where is the EU-project and watched more than 50 videos trying to describe the EU in 60 seconds. The winner will be revealed on the 19th of October during the International Film Festival in Gent. Tell the EU in 60 seconds… quite a task! Some of them were absolutely excellent, so it is possible!

September 2010: Research grants to individual journalists appear to be very fruitful to stimulate quality journalism. I was speaking in Brussels at the 1st anniversary of the Belgian Fonds Pour Le Journalisme, they could show off interesting results. Journalists emancipate themselves and start fundraising for the stories, they think are important. Journalismfund.eu has an overview over such grants.

September 2010: Danish Radio  carries an inspiring weekly program P1 Dokumentar with investigative stories, but also with reports about how investigative stories are done. This week I had the pleasure to contribute with a short report about a story done by German colleagues for Der Spiegel about trade with tissue of deceased human beings – this time from the Ukraine via Germany to the US.

June 2010: Huge interest in research grants from Journalismfund.eu. Good! (But a lot of work).

May 2010: I’ve had some of the most inspring days in Amsterdam! First I attended a conference about the future of journalism organised by Dutch TV’s NPOX and XMediaLab. Though the subjects sounds impossible, it was a bunch of truly inspiring people. After that I attended another, smaller conference, Hackdeoverheid, where programmers, journalists and public officials met to improve the public access to public data. I almost feel like when I was a kid and just learnt to read.

May 2010: It is amazing to see, how c0mparatively easy European journalism can be supported. Take 15-20 competent and committed journalists and programmers from various European countries, lock them up in one room for two days with free internet, coffee, sandwiches, give them a pile of fresh data – and stories will come rolling. Just look at the bottom of this blog.  Our invitation from Farmsubsidy.org resulted in stories about farmsubsidies to the weapon industry (in Germany) or an accordeon club (in Sweden). A young “farmer” age 14 was traced in Sweden, and some rather old “farmers” age 98 and 100 too. In Bulgaria not only the daughter of a minister but als0 his wife appear among beneficiaries. In England a recipient of 0,1 penny caused a £1.700 administrative cost, and in Slovenia various church- and charity organisations got farmsubsidies. The EU will decide about farmsubsidies the coming years. Let’s help the public to an informed debate.

April 2010: Participated in the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva, where a lot of great journalists from all over the world met. A team of journalists from Moldova, Romania and the Ukraine won the Global Shining Light Award. Interesting for me: They worked with the help of a research grant from Scoop. This is the second time, Scoop-colleagues win the Global Shining. Looks like the grantgiving does help do good journalism.

March 2010: Spoke at a panel of the European Ombudsman in Brussels.

March 2010: Good news about awards and nominations! The Climate Change Lobby, a research where I contributed the European part this past autumn, coordinated by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, is among the finalists for an IRE Award this year. The Investigative Reporters and Editors Award is among the most prominent awards for investigative journalism in the US. So that’s good news.  More good news is, that another story also is among the finalists, that is the story how the previous Moldovan president’s family got fabulously reach during the time of the regime. That one I am proud of too. The story was done by competent and courageous colleagues from Moldova, Romania and the Ukraine. However the reporters got a research grant from the Danish  Scoop project, of which I am a co-founder and current manager. Apparently it works!

February 2010: Dutch TV RTL asked a simple question to the European Commission: How much did you spend on travelling, representation and gifts. Find the link to the story on www.wobbing.eu – which we, by the way, currently are finetuning, so the site becomes an even better tool for journalists, who want to know more.

January 2010: I followed a class about cultural theory at Århus University. Interesting and highly inspiring for me as journalistic crafts person to get an insight into this example of a debate in the academic world.

January 2010: I have the pleasure to present the first articles, that were done thanks to the support from Journalismfund.eu. An important story about slave labour in today’s Europe. Great to know, that the model with the research grants works! Read the story about the story and my comment on Euobserver.com.

January 2010: Blogging again on EUobserver.com before the hearing of the new European Commisson. About transparency, of course. And to show off the new short film about the work of the farmsubsidy team.

December 2009: Climate is a global subject, so one of the US’ oldest centers for investigative reporting got a global team asking into climate and lobbyism in each their part of the world. See the Center for Public Integrity’s research here.  I did the European stories, and they were quoted amongst other places in Danish daily Information (Coal industry watered down European climate package, You pay your own lobbyists and the front page story EU ministers block for ambitious climate deal).

November 2009: Eurowobbers meeting in Utrecht. 20 of Europe’s most experienced journalists in the field of freedom of information from those countries, where it makes sense to use freedom of information laws to actually get information out, met in the charming and historic Dutch town of Utrecht to exchange experiences. Encouraging! Se more on Wobbing.

November 2009: Nordic Investigative Journalism Conference in Copenhagen. I was asked to talk about cross-border reporting and about freedom of information in the EU. I suggested Danish journalist Tom Heinemann and Norwegian journalist Erling Borgen for the Danish FUJ award – and they won!

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