The European Citizen Action Service (ECAS), in partnership with Open Society Institute – Sofia (OSIS) and ProMedia, organized and hosted the first edition of the European Summer Academy 2025 in Starosel, Bulgaria, under the Media Resilience project on September 23 – 26. The event brought together 45 participants, including representatives from 33 media initiatives across five EU countries, all of whom received financial support under the Call for Proposals “Enhancing Media Resilience and Quality News Journalism”.
The Academy aimed at improving independent media outlets’ capacities by addressing new European legal and regulatory frameworks for investigative journalists and media, innovative business and financial aspects of media development, technological innovations and new content formats. More specifically, the following topics were presented:
- Legal issues and ethical standards for investigative journalists
- European media regulatory framework and tackling disinformation, the new European Media Board composed of regulators from all 27 Members States
- Access to media services, ensuring equitable content availability
- Gender equality and diversity mainstreaming and use of inclusive and non-discriminatory language
- Business planning, diversification of funding and digital marketing for small media, financial discipline, innovation, and foresight essential for media to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape.
- Media production and AI tools, trends in multimedia journalism, including storytelling tools, social media formats, short videos, data visualisation, and mobile journalism
Participating media outlets rated the event highly with an overall score of 4.79 out of a maximum score of 5. Participants shared their inspirations to adopt new creative formats, experiment with AI tools and balance editorial content, financial needs and fiscal discipline. Overall the event was considered highly professional, impactful and providing concrete lessons and tools for new content creation and business development in today’s dynamic and complex media and social environments.
The Media Resilience project led by the Open Society Institute – Sofia (OSIS) and implemented in partnership with the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) and ProMedia, is co-funded by the European Union under the Creative Europe Programme, CREA (Grant Number 101180135). The goal of the project is to strengthen a free, diverse, and pluralistic news media landscape and promote quality journalism, with an emphasis on enhancing quality media outreach to the most vulnerable groups in society susceptible to disinformation.
