CEU Journalism Team Launches a New Investigation

As part of “Journalistic research and investigation”, a practical course conducted by Marius Dragomir at CEU, a team of 21 CEU students began their work on a new investigation in January 2022. The class is held in a newsroom format, with students presenting the most recent findings of their reporting and plans for their next assignments.

The course is aimed to familiarize students with a set of techniques used in journalistic investigation. “Whatever job they will do in the future, students will interact with journalists and media outlets. Hence, knowing how things work in journalism will be very important for many of them,” Dragomir said. “In my view, the best way to learn how journalism works is by doing it. And we’re doing just that in this class.”

Over the course of three months, the CEU Journalism team under Dragomir’s direction is collecting data and information to be able to produce a journalistic report. The students conduct interviews, search databases, access expert reports and other sources of information, and learn how to create their own pool of sources.

The goal of the class is to produce a report that will be published by a media outlet. Last year, the story documented in Dragomir’s class, an investigation into the illegal practices in detention centers across Europe, was published by Politico, attracting a large audience and interest from policymakers.

This year’s class has embarked on an investigation into an equally important topic, which will be revealed once the story comes out. “It is a really important issue and one that is quite difficult to report on because it deals with powerful and influential people,” Dragomir said. “We hope it will gather interest from the general public.”

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