Günter Bartsch ist staff member of Netzwerk Recherche, the German association of investigative journalists. He was its managing director 2009–23 and is currently in charge of international contacts. Günter studied political sciences at the Free University of Berlin and was a freelance journalist. He received his training as an editor at the Allgäuer Zeitung – and has always remained a local journalist at heart. At Netzwerk Recherche he initiated a nonprofit pournalism project (now run as Grow Greenhouse by his colleagues) and successfully sought to host the GIJC in Hamburg, 2019.