JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile

How does research work when you can no longer enter the country you are investigating due to the threat of politically motivated persecution? The panel “Staying close without being on site – research methods of Russian journalists in exile” discussed this question from three very different perspectives.

The JX Fund was founded in April 2022. Since then, we have been able to support 44 media outlets in exile in eight countries with over 900 journalists profiting from our work.

Together with The Fix and the Centre for Media Studies of the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, the JX Fund has published the study “Rebuilding Russian Media in Exile – Successes, Challenges and the Road Ahead,” which investigates the current state of Russian media in exile, and how the cities of Amsterdam, Berlin, Tbilisi, and Riga have become real magnets for exiled Russian journalists.

Read the full study

Since its founding, the JX Fund has supported over 15 media outlets in exile in over 7 different countries, as well as facilitating the expansion of a media hub in Georgia. In the most recent of the three rounds of funding to date, which took place in mid-June, a total of 7 Russian and Belarusian media outlets were selected for funding, including two prominent investigative journalism projects.

Over the past six months, Russia has adopted a series of draconian anti-press laws. In order to help threatened media professionals in Russia to choose a country of exile suitable for them and their needs, the JX Fund – European Fund for Journalism in Exile together with the Mass Media Defence Center from Voronezh has now launched the information platform Shpargalka | Exile.

Reporters without Borders (RSF) together with the Rudolf Augstein Foundation and the Schöpflin Foundation launch the JX Fund for journalism in exile, which is intended to help media workers quickly and flexibly, to enable them to continue their work immediately after they have fled war and crisis zones.