At the annual Netzwerk Recherche conference, several panels and workshops focused on community journalism and media startups. Here are some of my key highlights:

Engaging with the Community on Equal Terms

One particularly interesting insight came from Johanna Wild about Bellingcat’s tech community. Johanna founded Bellingcat’s Investigative Tech Team, which also develops its own tools for online investigations – often together with volunteers from the tech community.

Her key takeaway from this collaboration: if you work with a community, you need to be part of it yourself – sharing the same interests, speaking the same language, and embracing the same values. Only then does genuine exchange and collaboration work.

This lesson applies broadly to community journalism: journalists can only truly engage with a community if they are part of it themselves. Johanna also emphasizes that, despite close collaboration, clear rules, boundaries, and firm principles are necessary. Communicating these from the start makes it easier to manage conflicts within the community later.

Host Events!

In community journalism, exchange and participation are incredibly important—and few things achieve that better than events. Karla from Konstanz, Viernull from Düsseldorf, and CORRECTIV discussed this in one of the recent Netzwerk Recherche panels, showcasing both large and small formats.

At Karla, the main exchange format is the “Karla Wohnzimmer”. Here, the community can come together to discuss a topic with each other, experts, and the editorial team. Since the launch at Herz, this has taken place three times. Doing it more often would be too much work, says editorial director Wiebke Wetschera.

But events don’t always have to be elaborate: Once a week, the Karla team goes out for lunch and the community is welcome to join. There’s no big program – just a large table in a downtown restaurant where people eat and chat. Sometimes ten guests show up, sometimes two, sometimes none – but that’s okay.

The Viernull newsroom – or rather its courtyard – occasionally becomes the “Viernull Büdchen”. Drinks are handed out through a window, people start conversations, meet one another, and share stories. Journalism becomes more approachable.

More elaborate are the true-crime city tours that Viernull has been offering. Co-founder Hans Onkelbach, a former crime reporter, regularly guides small groups to crime scenes he originally covered.

CORRECTIV has also found that experiencing investigations on-site can be enriching. For example, during a forest walk with a forester, the community can see firsthand the effects of water shortages on the forest, instead of just reading about it in a report.

Innovative Formats Enrich Journalism

Community journalism is perfectly suited to experimenting with new journalistic formats. My CORRECTIV colleague Jonathan Sachse, together with Christian Fuchs from Die Zeit, presented a whole range of innovative formats – from playful Yps-style gimmicks to full-scale opera. They’ve also collected everything online so anyone can explore and get inspired.

Republica: Cash, AI, and the New Enlightenment

Republica was a few weeks ago, but here’s a brief recap.

First, a note from us:

We presented our software beabee in a workshop with Sascha Foerster from the digital agency Bonn.social. Sascha is one of our open-source users and uses beabee to monetize his Mastodon instance, Bonn.social. In the workshop, he explained why he chose us over other tools and how beabee works for him. There’s no recording, but our presentation is available.

Digital sovereignty was also the focus of a panel we hosted: Our project manager Julia Hildebrand discussed with Philip Banse from Lage der Nation and Ingo Dachwitz from netzpolitik.org whether independent media also need independent tools to build sustainable business models and avoid dependency on major platforms. We believe that media organizations that decide to build their own tool stack often face major hurdles. Not everyone can afford it, especially since targeted funding is often lacking.

Artificial Intelligence Reinforces the Power of the Big Platforms

This year, Republica of course couldn’t avoid the topic of artificial intelligence. The hype was everywhere—and it continues to dominate the industry. For anyone who wants to take a step back and view AI from a different perspective, it’s worth watching the Republica talk by Meredith Whittaker, CEO of Signal. She connects AI with the data privacy practices of major tech companies:

Media Funding, Viennese Style

The Vienna Business Agency presented its media funding programs at Republica. One of the smaller programs provides €10,000 in support for freelance journalists or very small media companies. I like this model because the barrier to access is relatively low: an online application with a detailed project description and budget plan is enough. A jury then decides on the allocation. There are several submission deadlines throughout the year.

Such a model would be extremely helpful for many very small media projects in Germany. With €10,000, founders could take their first steps more freely: learning basic business skills, networking, testing prototypes, or preparing a crowdfunding campaign. The main goal is to make a concept market-ready – and then eligible for larger funding programs.

The Vienna Business Agency also offers a bigger program, providing up to €100,000. For example, the inclusive media project “Andererseits” is currently being funded from this program.

According to the agency, it’s also possible to fund projects in Germany indirectly, if there are project partners based in Vienna.

The New Phase of Enlightenment

CORRECTIV publisher David Schraven was also at Republica. In his talk, he explained what community journalism means to him and how it could transform journalism in the future. David sees it as an opportunity to counteract the decline of journalism, especially in local and rural areas, where traditional media are often no longer financially sustainable—making new approaches necessary. He also described how he is trying to establish a new local media outlet in his hometown of Bottrop. You can watch the full talk here: