Stars4Media is a training programme for European media organisations aiming at facilitating cooperation between media professionals (“rising stars”) to accelerate media innovation and cross-border coverage.
Media professionals, media organisations and tech companies from EU countries have the chance to cooperate around bottom-up Initiatives to test ideas and technologies, develop new business models and produce journalistic content.
Partners of the project are the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Europe’s Media Lab (Fondation EURACTIV), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). The project is co-funded by the European Commission. Read more about the project team.
You can learn here about the first edition, which ran from November 2019 to October 2020, and supported 21 cross-border initiatives, involving 42 media organisations and 105 media professionals from all over Europe.
Why Stars4Media?
European news media today face an unprecedented crisis. It is a crisis of identity as well as an economic and societal crisis: financial resources and trust have been declining in the media sector for several years. The Stars4Media pilot project is responding to a proposal voted by the European Parliament in 2018. Read more about the policy context here.
The objectives of the Stars4Media training programme are to:
- Foster media innovation: editorial, technological and marketing innovation
- Build new media partnerships and support mobility and virtual cooperation across Europe
- Foster quality journalism and media pluralism
- Boost the careers of future “stars” via a vibrant community of media innovators
