Become an OpenNews Fellow at CORRECTIV

Six news organisations are part of the 2016 OpenNews fellowship programme. CORRECTIV is the only non-US newsroom in the list and we want you to work with us as a fellow! Here are some information bits about us.

Who we are

CORRECTIV is the first non-profit investigative newsroom in Germany and heavily inspired by the model of ProPublica (although we are still much smaller). We are funded by memberships and major grants from foundations and our focus is on mid- to long-term investigations. Our team currently consists of around 15 reporters and editors, so small enough for a fellow to have real impact. Nonetheless we collaborate with media organisations in Germany and Europe and many of our publications reach an international audience.

What we are working on

A few examples of our work from the past year which illustrate our vision of open journalism:

• We investigated what happens to monetary fines paid as a result of criminal proceedings. The result: Judges and federal prosecutors distribute these funds with almost no supervision and at their own discretion. Instead of just writing a story, we collected data from the past eight years on court donations totalling more than 350 million Euros. Everyone can now search for suspicious transactions in our database.
• Multi-resistant bacteria are one of the largest health threats of our time. We investigated how dangerous the situation really is and visualized how often health insurers are charged for the treatment of the most relevant superbugs. Everyone can enter their post code into the database to track how their region is affected in comparison to the rest of Germany and how the number of reported superbugs has developed.
• We are investigating the free trade agreement TTIP. We have illustrated the most important objectives with catchy graphics and are continuously publishing original documents.
• Our investigations into subjects such as TTIP and court donations are long-term projects. We are gearing up to start a two-year investigation about multi-resistant superbugs in Europe. Climate change is also a topic we want to thoroughly tackle. We strive to give citizens information that can be continually updated since most stories simply don’t have a finite ending, but instead keep on evolving.
• We are currently developing a virtual newsroom. Using this new platform, we want to investigate stories and subjects important to our society collectively with citizens and other journalists. In this way, we can go far beyond what we can accomplish individually. With the virtual newsroom, local investigations can be combined to discover and paint a larger picture.

Why you should become a fellow!

The OpenNews fellowship allows you to enrich a newsroom with your perspective and skills while learning about the on-going investigations and new methods in journalism in general. Come help us with our investigations and build cool tools with us! All you need to do is apply until August 21, 2015!