How Pod črto in Slovenia crowdfunded investigative reporting and what’s next

We spoke with Taja Topolovec, the co-founder of Pod črto (in Eng., ‘The Bottom Line’). It is a Slovenian independent and non-profit media outlet focusing on investigative reporting, data journalism and in-depth stories, founded in September 2014. Their projects include in-depth analysis of the prevalence and reasons for violent crime in Slovenia, uncovering corruption among Slovenia’s mayors and investigating fraud, mismanagement of European funds, illegal gathering of personal information by Slovenian police (last story), environmental issues, systematic analysis of health system and poverty in Slovenia. Because investigative journalism in Slovenia could be also translated as “researching”, Pod črto journalists were at first perceived as scientists. So first they had to launch a communication campaign explaining what investigative journalism is and what they intend to do. What did we talk about: • history of Pod črto and how did their crowdfunding campaign go • the problem with inv