Meet our 2024 Panel of Judges

We are proud to present the Panel of Judges for this year’s edition of the European Press Prize.

Our Panel of Judges plays a crucial role in identifying the best European journalistic projects of the year. They select the winners of the Prize from a shortlist that is prepared for them by our Preparatory Committee. They also assign the Special Award, which goes to a striking entry that defies categories and disciplines, or to a theme or project that deserves recognition.

This year, there are two additions to the Panel of Judges, in a rotation for which Alexandra Föderl-Schmid and Sheila Sitalsing will be stepping down as Judges. We would like to wholeheartedly thank them both for their invaluable contribution to the previous years’ editions of our Award, and for their thorough and critical, but always fair, analyses.

New Judge: Paul Radu

We welcome to the Panel of Judges, Paul Radu. He is Co-Founder and Head of Innovation at OCCRP. He founded the organization in 2007 with Drew Sullivan. He leads OCCRP’s major investigative projects, scopes regional expansion, and develops new strategies and technology to expose organized crime and corruption across borders. KEEP READING

New Judge: Natalia Antelava

We welcome to the Panel of Judges, Natalia Antelava. She is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Coda Story, an award-winning newsroom that covers the roots of global crises. Originally from Tbilisi, Georgia, Natalia started her journalism career in West Africa and has been BBC’s resident correspondent in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, Washington DC, and India. KEEP READING

Alan Rusbridger

Alan Rusbridger is the chair of the Panel of Judges. He is a British journalist, Principal at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford, and Chair at Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Rusbridger was editor-in-chief of The Guardian until 2015. KEEP READING

Can Dündar

Can Dündar is a Turkish journalist, documentary filmmaker, and book author. He was editor-in-chief of the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, has 40 books to his name, and was sentenced in absentia to 27 years in prison after publishing a story on Turkish intelligence’s arms trafficking to Syrian radical Islamists. KEEP READING

Clara Jiménez Cruz 

Clara Jiménez Cruz is the co-founder and CEO of Maldita.es, a Spanish foundation and nonprofit news organization created to fight disinformation and lies in public discourse through fact-checking and data journalism, which won the innovation European Press Prize in 2021 for its WhatsApp chatbot. KEEP READING