Mentoring Program for Encouraging Investigative Journalism in Slovakia

The U.S. Embassy in Bratislava is seeking proposals to administer a training and mentoring program to foster investigative journalism. Slovakia is home to a small but committed group of investigative journalists, but they face challenges in pursuing this work. We aim to train new investigative journalists by setting up a mentorship program for promising journalism students and providing them and their journalist mentors with training in how to conduct in-depth investigations, which require technical expertise and a thorough understanding of business practices and regulations, as well as knowledge in how to track down sources. We envision that this program would include several media outlets with the involvement of one to three of their top senior journalists at each as mentors. About 20 journalism students and junior journalists would be selected to participate as mentees. Over the course of a year, the students would have a chance to rotate through several outlets and eventually work at a daily and weekly print outlet, as well as a TV news department, for two to three months at each. Program costs could include: fees to an NGO to administer the program, honoraria for the mentors, funds for equipment purchase for student use, a trainer from the U.S. to work with mentors and mentees during the program, and costs associated with this week-long training session.