Our projects

Hostwriter is part of the original cohort of 17 organizations behind the Display Europe platform, which launched in December 2023. The platform unites journalists, researchers, and citizens to shape a networked European media model, independent from market and government influences. The platform is a central portal dedicated to original, federated, and user-generated media content in 15 languages across the EU. Hostwriter also hosts the internal publishers platform.

In November 2023, Hostwriter collaborated with CMFE on hosting its first-ever conference in Budapest, Hungary, titled "Display.Voices - European Communities in Media Conference" to kick-start the project.

Together with five European universities, Hostwriter implemented a European project to improve the skills of a new generation of journalists that are connected to the use of digital communication opportunities. In September 2022, we organised a five day in-person training for journalism students, and an event about shrinking civic space and the future of journalism. The program focused on how journalists cover communities, representation, citizen journalism, and the role of journalism as a watchdog in society. The project ran from 2021-2023.

As part of the project Re: Framing Migrants in the European Media, Hostwriter created a publication collecting perspectives on creating community media. Shift! Actions for Migrating Perspectives is available online. With publication partners Here to Support, a launch event was also held in Amsterdam, highlighting the voices in the magazine and bringing together diverse voices in European media. In their introduction to SHIFT – Actions for migrating perspectives the editors write: “We have the pleasure of introducing some of Europe’s most vibrant media makers. Within these pages, we share some of their experiences dealing with the mainstream media and their ideas for decolonizing the news industry.“ Hostwriter is partnering with the Re:framing Migrants project, by providing a group on our community forum dedicated to the journalists involved in the project.

In 2017 Hostwriter launched the first edition of Agora Global with the first project – Agora 2017 – which was a cross-border journalism collaboration between Hostwriter and change-makers from Armenia.

With each project within Agora Global, dossiers of published works resulting from the collaborations will be posted on this site, as an archive and future inspiration for journalists eager to collaborate across border. The latest project took place in shape of an emergency grant program enacted in response to the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and available to journalists throughout Europe. Find the dossiers created in the Agora program here.

The Sinking Cities Project is a global cross-border investigation that examines how sea-level rise is impacting major cities and how their governments are responding to the consequences of climate crisis.Local journalists spent six months with our team investigating how their coastal cities are preparing for a threat that will affect communities, ecosystems, and economies all over the world.These reports show that the response to the climate crisis is a social, historical and political phenomenon. Even on a city level, money and power obscure the picture of what needs to be done to ensure safety and justice for all. Read the stories here!

The Circle is a new approach to cross-border journalism and a collaboration. Four European media partners — Are We Europe (NL), Hostwriter (DE), Arty Farty (FR), and n-ost (DE) — join forces to create media knowledge hubs in eight European cities. Funded by the European Commission, the project is dedicated to developing new digital skills and training professionals in the journalism sector in state-of-the-art digital storytelling through Design Sprints. We explore next-generation digital media formats by building bridges between larger, established legacy media and up-and-coming media organizations.

Hostwriter set up the media hubs in Porto, Portugal and Belgrade, Serbia and mentor the participating groups of media professionals through the start-up phase. The project is a unique chance for learning and exchanging about some of the challenges facing local journalism and imagining ways to overcome them.

Hostwriter hosts The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom's closed exhange platform for journalists and media workers in exile in Germany. The collaboration is within the framework of ECPMF's "ExileNet" project, which expands the organization's existing offers for journalists in exile with the primary goal of enabling long-term professional future opportunities and social participation. Journalists who are currently in exile in Germany and interested in joining the network should reach out directly at exilenet@ecpmf.eu for further information.

In 2019 Hostwriter published the book Unbias the News - Why diversity matters for journalism. We asked journalists to tell us about the barriers they face in their field and potential ways to fix them. We received stories from colleagues around the globe - from Germany to Brazil, Tajikistan to the Philippines, and China to the U.S. - that directly address the challenges to making journalism more diverse in ways that are surprising, funny and sometimes infuriating. The result is a field guide to unbiasing the newsroom and a launchpad for a new kind of journalism that looks more like the society it serves. Diversity is not about political correctness. It’s about quality journalism. In journalism, white, male, Western voices still dominate and are often privileged over others, which means that we are not getting the whole story, or the most accurate one. You can order a copy of the book from us for 20 EUR plus shipping, we offer discount for bulk orders.

With the project 'Chain Reactions' we researched new opportunities that may arise as a result of the transition to a green economy in Germany, such as food and energy, and the types of secondary effects this will have on local communities in other parts of the world. Our cross-border newsroom Unbias the News implemented the project in cooperation with Perspective Daily, and we use cross-border solutions journalism, to look at all sides of the story. The project was funded by the European Journalism Centre, through the Solutions Journalism Accelerator.