"It's hard to express how grateful I am for your support in making this experience possible, an opportunity I wouldn't have easily afforded at this stage of my career. I'm now heading back to the good old politics on the banks of the Dâmbovița river, with a new arsenal of ideas that I hope I'll manage to use wisely and sensitively, to better serve the public interest and raise the standard of Romanian journalism."
Ruth Novacovici, 2026 mentee
"As mentioned above, the kick-off meeting surpassed any expectation I could have imagined. I can’t even convey how inspired and motivated I felt after that weekend, after so much encouragement and openness from everyone, all the mentors and the mentees. I felt like I was finally on the right pathway in terms of my career and my self-esteem throve from that point onwards, like never before."
Iulia Mureșan, 2026 mentee
The Ratiu Forum Journalism Mentorship Programme
ABOUT THE PROGRAMME
The Ratiu Forum Journalism Mentorship Programme aims to stimulate the development of outstanding reporting skills among early-career journalists from Romania and the wider region, including Moldova, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Ukraine. Through individual mentorship, structured learning activities, and peer exchange, it provides a professionally rigorous framework in which emerging journalists can develop ambitious, high-quality work under the guidance of experienced European-based journalists.
The programme begins with an in-person meeting at the Rațiu Conference Centre in Turda, where selected participants pitch their story ideas to a panel of experienced mentors and receive tailored feedback to refine their proposals. Each mentee is then matched with one of the eight programme mentors, with whom they work closely over the following months — incorporating expert guidance into their research, developing their editorial judgment, and producing a final piece of journalism. Alongside the mentoring relationship, participants engage in a series of webinars designed to deepen their understanding of key aspects of the profession.
Starting in 2025, The Ratiu Report Substack serves as a digital platform for articles, event updates and community storytelling, where the body of work produced by the Mentorship is showcased.
This combination of individual guidance, collective learning, and real-world application is what distinguishes the Rațiu Forum Journalism Mentorship Programme and has established it as a valuable platform for the next generation of journalists in the region.
Next edition opens on the 15th of September 2026
2026-2027 EDITION
Programme Calendar
- Applications: 15 September – 15 October 2026
- Results announcement: 5 November
- Peer-mentor assignment, first webinar and pitch refinement: November – early December 2026
- Kickoff meeting in Turda: exact dates TBC, January 2027
- Mentoring sessions and fieldwork: January 2027 – May 2027
- Final Submission: May 23rd
- Evaluation and results: June 2027
- UK Summer School: dates TBC
Read more about last year’s kickoff meeting here.
ELIGIBILITY
Before applying, please carefully consider your ability to fully engage with this programme.
This programme requires a significant time investment and active participation. We seek candidates who are enthusiastic and dedicated, in order to gain the maximum benefit from this opportunity.
If selected, you will have to:
Attend two preparatory sessions during November and December 2026 in order to refine the story proposal submitted in the application form.
Attend a mandatory in-person kickoff meeting at the Ratiu Democracy Centre in Turda, Romania in January 2027 (exact dates to be announced). Transportation costs will be covered by the Ratiu Forum. Accommodation and meals will also be provided during the meeting.
Dedicate time for thorough fieldwork to develop their story in the first part of 2027.
Collaborate closely with their assigned mentor throughout the programme, maintaining timely and responsive communications and attending scheduled meetings (or calls) on an at least biweekly basis.
Candidates must be between 20 and 27 years of age at the time of applying and have no more than two years of experience working full-time in a newsroom.
Successful participants are required to:
Pitch an original story idea and refine it based on feedback received from mentors.
Attend all scheduled activities in preparation for and during the in-person kickoff meeting at the Ratiu Democracy Centre in Turda, Romania, taking place during a weekend in January 2027 (Friday arrival, Monday departure).
Actively and responsibly engage in one-on-one mentorship sessions and other learning activities offered by the mentorship (webinars, learning materials).
Produce an original, well-researched story.
WHAT WE OFFER
- Each year, the Ratiu Forum Journalism Mentorship Programme selects a group of promising young journalists to work on original stories from idea to publication, under the close guidance of top journalists and editors from Romania, the UK, Poland, Hungary, and beyond.
- Personalised mentoring with leading journalists and editors.
- Professional networking with peers and media experts across Europe.
- Publishing and visibility opportunities, with stories featured through The Ratiu Report and partner media outlets.
- A chance to compete for a fully funded place at an international journalism summer school in the United Kingdom
QUESTIONS?
Please contact: roxana.david@ratiudemocracycenter.org
2026 EDITION
The 2026 edition brought together 15 participants from Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and Ukraine who produced work of exceptional quality — investigative pieces and cultural journalism that shed light on some of the most pressing issues facing Romania and Eastern Europe today. This year’s cohort tackled systemic and underreported subjects: the struggles of migrants navigating hostile systems, the conditions faced by women giving birth in Romania, the frozen conflict in Transnistria, and more. Several pieces were published in prominent outlets including The Hill, The Washington Times, New Eastern Europe and Euronews România.
This year’s edition was made possible by the generous support of the Rațiu Family Charitable Foundation, CTP and The Petrichor Endowment, through philanthropist Karen Renée Lane.
THE MENTEES
This year’s co-winners
The quality of this year’s cohort was exceptional, and reflected in the deliberation outcome.
The Prize was awarded jointly to Ruth Novacovici and Lili-Anna Lempek — the first time in the programme’s history that it has been shared.
Ruth Novacovici
In the Path of Waters (În calea apelor)
Ruth is a journalist and parliamentary correspondent, currently working for HotNews. For her mentorship project, she turned her lens on an issue with direct consequences for thousands of Romanian families: construction permits granted in flood-prone areas, and the regulatory failures that allow dangerous development to continue unchecked. In the Path of Waters, published by Euronews Romania is an investigative documentary that combines on-the-ground reporting with rigorous documentation. Ruth attended the News Associates Summer School in the United Kingdom as part of her prize.
Ruth was mentored by Adam Reichardt.
Lili-Anna Lempek
The mouse’s revolt against the lion – are Hungary’s pro-Russian days over for good?
Lili-Anna is a Hungarian journalist studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Corvinus University of Budapest. Rather than producing a single article, Lili-Anna built a body of work examining one of Europe’s most consequential political moments in recent years from several complementary angles. Across three pieces — published in The Washington Times, The Hill, and New Eastern Europe — she traced Hungary’s political transformation under Viktor Orbán, the emergence of Péter Magyar as a credible opposition force, and the deeper historical question of how a nation shaped by Soviet domination could tolerate, for so long, a government so closely aligned with Moscow. Ambitious in scope and rigorous in its analysis, her work is a remarkable achievement for an early-career journalist.
Lili-Anna was mentored by Dan Perry.
This year also saw Rațiu mentees Vanessa Mathe and Raluca Cristea win recognition at the Superscrieri Gala, further demonstrating the calibre of this year’s cohort beyond the deliberation itself.
THE MENTEES
David Manolache – Sfărâmat de România / Broken by Romania
Ana Pisarenco – In Transnistria sentences stop before they reach the end
Raluca Cristea – Poate o tabără să țină băieții departe de manosferă? / Can a camp keep boys away from the manosphere?
Iulia Mureșan – Whose Body, Whose Birth? Burying Systemic Tragedies and Abuse in the Romanian Maternities
THE MENTORS
Alison Mutler
Alison Mutler first began her career working with journalists covering communist Romania after she graduated Romanian literature and language at London University in 1987.Her proper debut came during the 1989 anti-communist revolution when she worked for Britain’s ITN television channel on the ground in Romania. She moved to Romania to work full-time as a journalist after the revolution and freelanced for the Daily Telegraph, CNN and the BBC et alia. She then spent 25 years as chief correspondent for The Associated Press, reporting on Romania, Moldova and occasionally Bulgaria. Since 2019, she has been with Universul.net and its director since 2021. She occasionally collaborates with Radio Free Europe, the Financial Times, Times Radio and others. Her book ‘Plecata la Revolutie’ (Gone to a Revolution) was published in 2007.
Diana Oncioiu, currently a reporter working for the alternative publication Dela0, is also a member of the Să Fie Lumină project that in 2019 published the first investigations on the sexual abuses committed by a local bishop and a monk against high school students. In June 2024, both of them were sentenced to 8 and 15 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. The decision is not final. She has a background in broadcasting, having worked for five years for Realitatea TV and Digi24. She covers mainly social topics – domestic violence, education, social assistance, extreme poverty, and social exclusion – and is the author of a series of in-depth reportages covering topics like the social reintegration of former inmates, life in the undergrounds of the Bucharest neighbourhood Ferentari, human trafficking and the prosecution of sexual crimes against child victims. She has studied political science at the University of Bucharest and has a MA in Holocaust and genocide studies from the University of Amsterdam. Diana Oncioiu is the 2020 recipient of the Ion Ratiu Journalism Award.
Dan Perry
Veteran global correspondent Dan Perry is the former chief editor of Associated Press for Europe and Africa (from London) and for Middle East (from Cairo). He has also served as AP’s bureau chief in the Caribbean (from Puerto Rico) and the chairman of the Foreign Press Association for Israel and Palestine. He is currently a world affairs columnist for Newsweek and The Forward and publishes a well-read newsletter on Substack, Ask Questions Later. He is also widely published in MediaIte, Jerusalem Post, CNN, The Hill, The Atlantic Council and Romania’s Universul and other publications, and is a television commentator, He led projects that have won numerous prizes (including the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for an investigative all-format series on Yemen). With his background in technology and entrepreneurship as well, Dan has repeatedly served as a delegate at the World Economic Forum in Davos and various other global leadership conferences such as the Young Presidents Organization Geopolitics Summit, hosting panels with political and business leaders. His array of interview subjects range from John McCain, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev and Benjamin Netanyahu to Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and U2 frontman Bono. He started his journalism career in video production and photography (some perhaps pixelated images available on Instagram @danperry63).
Adam Reichardt
Adam Reichardt is the Editor-in-Chief of the New Eastern Europe magazine based in Poland. Published since 2011, the magazine is one of the leading publications dedicated to the region of Central and Eastern Europe. He is also the co-host of the “Talk Eastern Europe” podcast – the official podcast of New Eastern Europe. Adam has also previously worked as the Director of the Warsaw Euro-Atlantic Summer Academy (WEASA) which is organized annually at the College of Europe in Natolin (Warsaw) and was a member of the executive team of the Three Ukrainian Revolutions project run by the College of Europe. Adam was short-listed for the European Press Prize in the category of “Editing” for his work on New Eastern Europe and was named to the “New Europe 100” list of the region’s top innovators. In 2019 he was a Transatlantic Media Fellow with the Heinrich Boell Foundation. In addition to his activities at NEE, Adam also leads workshops on journalism, communications, and social media for students during international academies and seminars in Poland and abroad. Before establishing New Eastern Europe, Adam spent eight years in public policy in Washington DC, and a large portion of his studies in Krakow, Poland, where he now permanently resides. Adam has an MA in Public Administration in Public and Nonprofit Management from the George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia USA.
Emilia Șercan
Emilia Șercan is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, University of Bucharest, PhD in Communication sciences, and an investigative journalist with over 25 years of experience. As an investigative journalist, she has exposed dozens of plagiarism cases in the doctoral theses of prominent Romanian politicians and public figures, investigations that led to profound reforms in doctoral studies. Her investigative work, turned into a public mission, unveiled a vast, intricate mechanism of trading political power and influence through plagiarism and academic fraud. Șercan has received several fellowships, both as a professor and a journalist, scholarship holder of the U.S. Department of State at the University of Ohio (2016), French State Scholarship at Stendhal University Grenoble 3 (2012 – 2013), and Freedom House Scholarship in the USA (2004). Over the years, has won several professional and academic awards, such as Journalist of the Year (2016), Freedom of Expression Award (2016), “Ion Rațiu” Journalism Award (2016), Bologna Professor of the Year (2017), “Nicolae Iorga” Award from the Romanian Society of Historical Sciences (2018), European Network for Academic Integrity Award (2019), Social Dialogue Group Award (2020), and Timișoara Society Award (2023). She published her doctoral thesis – defended in 2013 at the University of Bucharest – under the title The Cult of Secrecy. Mechanisms of Censorship in the Communist Press (Polirom Publishing House, Iași). Both academic and journalistic interest in the field of integrity has materialized in two books, The Doctorate Factory or How the Foundations of a Nation Are Undermined (Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2017), and The Ponta Case. Reconstructing the Most Infamous Plagiarism in Romanian History (Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2022).
Nick Thorpe
Nick Thorpe is a writer, filmmaker and award-winning BBC journalist, specialising in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, born in England in 1960. He studied Modern Languages at the Universities of Reading (UK), Dakar (Senegal) and Freiburg (Germany), graduating in 1982. He has lived in Budapest since 1986 and is married with 5 sons. He reported on the fall of Communism throughout Eastern Europe and the break-up of Yugoslavia for the BBC, Independent, Observer, and Guardian newspapers, including the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. He has been a Central Europe Correspondent for the BBC since 1996. With BBC colleagues, he won a Peabody award for his coverage of the Refugee crisis in 2015, and a Lovie award for best internet reporting in 2018.
Ovidiu Vanghele
Ovidiu Vanghele began his journalism career in 2002, when he was hired by Mediafax news agency at the end of his first year at university. He developed a strong interest in investigative journalism, rising through the ranks from reporter to editor, special reporter, and senior reporter. After a decade at Mediafax, Ovidiu joined the Pro TV news team, where he contributed to the network’s flagship show, România, te iubesc! In 2013, he left mainstream media to establish the Center for Investigative Media (CIM), an NGO he continues to lead. Ovidiu has uncovered numerous high-profile investigations, revealing the misuse, theft, and illegal expenditure of millions of euros. His most notable work has exposed abuses in mental health centers, as well as various corruption, organized crime, and money laundering schemes. In 2022, Ovidiu, alongside his colleague Bianca Albu (formerly of Buletin de București and Rise Project), investigated a series of state-funded care homes for vulnerable people, run by associates of Gabriela Firea, former mayor of Bucharest and a leading figure in the Social Democratic Party. The appalling conditions uncovered in these facilities sent shockwaves through the country and significantly diminished Firea’s political standing. In 2023, Ovidiu partnered with Recorder to reveal a major corruption and money laundering scheme involving Vlad Oprea, the influential mayor of Sinaia and a prominent member of the National Liberal Party. Ovidiu also taught investigative journalism at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences at the University of Bucharest from 2016 to 2023. Since 2017, he has co-directed the Let There Be Light (Să Fie Lumină) project with Vlad Stoicescu. Through this initiative, he published the first-ever investigation that led to the prosecution of an Orthodox bishop for the rape and sexual abuse of seminary boys. Former Bishop Onila was sentenced to eight years in prison, with the appeal pending. Ovidiu’s investigative work has earned numerous national and international awards. His reporting has been featured by prominent international media outlets, including Associated Press, Reuters, NPR, The Guardian, ARTE, and Le Monde, among others.
Luiza Vasiliu
Luiza Vasiliu, 40 yo, Romania, studied literature and became a journalist by contagion. In 2016 she co-founded Scena9, a platform for the young generation of artists and thinkers, where she edited over 1000 pieces. In the meantime, she discovered the thrill of investigative journalism. She published a series about one of the most famous Romanian doctors, who performed unauthorized experimental procedures which killed children or left them crippled. This investigation led to the doctor’s arrest and was a finalist for the European Science Writer of The Year Award. She wrote about astrophysicists studying micro black holes, a teacher chastised for showing her students a movie about Verlaine and Rimbaud, a communism dissident setting Stalin’s statue on fire. Her latest work involves the Tate brothers and their ties to Romanian organized crime. Areas of interest: human rights, gender based violence, human trafficking.
THE MENTEES
Over the first five years of the programme, 80 aspiring journalists from Romania were selected to participate and received guidance from professional mentors across the region. Each year concluded with an article competition, and the winner was offered a spot at international journalism summer schools in London.
WINNERS
2025 – Ana Maria Preda, mentored by Ovidiu Vanghele – „Dacă e să cadă blocul, măcar să fie în casa ei”
2024 – Ingrid Ștefan, mentored by Emilia Șercan – Poveștile românilor care apelează la mila trecătorilor în Țările de Jos
2023 – Andra Mureșan, mentored by Dan Perry – Femei care au omorât pentru viața lor
2022 – Sonia Teodoriu, mentored by Alex Nedea – Coșul pentru un trai decent
2021 – Mălina Mândruțescu, mentored by Kit Gillet – A National Trauma May Win Romania Its First Oscar
2025 FINALISTS
Ana Maria Preda – „Dacă e să cadă blocul, măcar să fie în casa ei”
Mihail Nesteriuc – Moscow Wants Moldova. Europe Must Stop It
Dana Coțovanu – Exploitation and trauma behind video chatting in Romania. To be published
Raluca Cristea – Drum spre școală cu oprire la pariuri sportive; A stop off at the gambling hall on the way to school
Daniela Vasilache – Poveștile invizibile ale adopției: ce se întâmplă cu copiii odată ajunși în noua familie
Iustina Rusu – Medical crisis in rural Romania. To be published
Miruna Turbatu – „Simțeam permanent un gol”. Viața cu tulburare de personalitate borderline
Ștefania Gheorghe – Cutremurul care vine și cum s-a transformat Bucureștiul într-o capcană de beton
Luca Murray – Learning to Drive in Romania is Corrupt and Dangerous
EVENT ARCHIVE
