Stefan Candea is an award wining investigative journalist from Romania, specialized in covering organized crime, now currently the coordinator of European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), which he co-founded in 2015. EIC investigations have covered, among others, the murky financial transactions in the world of European professional football, the Malta workings as a pirate base for tax avoidance inside the EU, and the secret dealings of the International Criminal Court. Recently, while looking for a way to lower the barrier to investigative collaborations, he founded Liquid Investigations. During the last two decades Stefan participated in co-founding the Global Investigative Journalism Network and helped kickstart several nonprofit ventures related to in-depth journalism (CRJI and The Black Sea) and technology (Sponge Lab)- thus contributing in building a backbone for investigative-related journalism initiatives that stretch across Europe and beyond. As a long-time member of ICIJ, he managed the Eastern Europe research into the Offshore Leaks project which was in 2012 the first large cross-border investigative reporting collaboration in history. Stefan has been involved in training and teaching, as well as in critical reflection on the media in his own country and on the cross-border investigative networks internationally.

Cross-border Networks for Investigative Journalism: a critical perspective

While researchers and authors document the disappearance of investigative journalism in mainstream media because of budget cuts (Starkman 2014, Gruen 2014, Lewis 2006), some observe a boom during the last decade in alternative organizations and groups focusing on investigative journalism who network across borders. The focus of Stefan Candea addresses the lack of academic research in the field of cross-border collaborative investigative journalism. This comparative study looks at the workings of international networks of investigative journalists as well as at how distinct organizations interact with the network. After 15 years of professional experience in this field, Stefan Candea takes a step back and reassess the concept of networked investigative journalism. He will form, test, articulate and explain functionalities of professional collaboration in cross-border networks among investigative journalists. The main focus concerns the exchange of information among these networks and the balance between collaboration and fair competition, the power structures and the role of technology, data and non-profit in this field.