30 Sep 2018, 17:17
  • Rose-Anne
    Clermont
    Rose-Anne Clermont is an award-winning freelance journalist writing on migration and environmentalism. Her work has been published by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel, Berliner Zeitung, Die Zeit, and U.S.-based media including The New York Times, NPR and USA Today. Rose-Anne is currently a freelance editor and trainer for media development projects focused on environmental conservation in East Africa.
  • Martha
    Otwinowski
    Martha managed the CLEW Journalism Network until February 2020. She developed network strategies and activities for energy reporters across the globe and helped launch the network platform in 2018. Prior to that, she was a correspondent at Index on Censorship, and also worked as policy researcher at a non-profit start-up.

Wind farm projects in the Arctic - an international story

Article published after a cross-border collaboration in the Arctic. Source: Barents Observer screenshot.
Article published after a cross-border collaboration in the Arctic. Source: Barents Observer screenshot.
Dare to cross borders, cooperate across traditional beats, use innovative story-telling and most of all: collaborate! Three journalists from Norway and Russia accepted the challenge of the first ever CLEW call for border-crossing energy transition story pitches. They teamed up to cover wind farm projects in the Artic – and their stories are now published. Atle Staalesen from The Barents Observer told CLEW about the challenges the team overcame for this in-depth, international story.

Atle Staalesen, Thomas Nilsen from The Barents Observer, and Maksim Polyakov from 7x7 worked together on this story supported by the first CLEW cross-border journalism grant. After the team presented their story pitch at the Global Energy Transition Journalism conference 2017 on 10 November 2017, the journalists undertook seven months of research. The final story was published in the Barents Observer on July 12. Find links to the articles supported by the grant below.

 

Rose-Anne spoke with Atle about the project:

What was your biggest challenge working on this project?

Access to information on the Russian side, (which shares a ba­sin with Norway), and the region­al government officials involved.

How did you manage to finally get information?

For a long time we had a close and well-functioning coopera­tion with Maxim Polyakov and his journal 7x7 and the joint planning and execution there­fore went smoothly. The Bar­ents Observer works on a daily basis with cross-border stories and our contacts in Russia are crucial.

Articles by Atle and Maksim

Atle Staalesen:

Maksim Polyakov:

Journalism for the energy transition

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