Media Incubator in Southeast Europe 2021-2022

Radmila Mladenova during the Media Incubator workshop in Sofia. | ©Nevena Rikova The "Media Incubator" is a training program for students and prospective journalists who want to report on discrimination, social inequality and prejudice against minorities. The media, whether print, audiovisual or online, have a decisive influence on the opinion of the majority. "Good, not sensational, but interesting and educational social reports hardly appear in the media of our host countries," confirms the media program Southeastern Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

Therefore, the project of the Goethe-Instituts in Bulgaria, Bosnia und Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Croatia and Romania wants to contribute to the creation of more stories about people beyond labels. As a result, in all of the aforementioned countries, the institutes and their partners have organized workshops and trainings that have provided the participants with useful tools for their work.

A group of journalists from different media and different parts of Croatia founded a joint editorial team under the direction of their main mentor, the freelance journalist Barbara Matejčić. The participants felt the urgent need to exchange views on issues of social marginalization. The spectrum of topics ranged from poverty and the social exclusion of older people to geographic differences in the Croatian development and the disadvantages poorer women esperience when buying hygiene products. Within five workshops, the participants were given socio-economic, legal and psychological background information, but the exchange of views and experiences with experienced journalists, for example on ethical issues, tuned out to be also very important.

How can you avoid sensationalism and at the same time report critically about poverty? What distinguishes a good media newsroom from the others? What makes a good journalist or editor? Is it the job of journalists to create a fairer society? These were some of the questions that were discussed during the training. Above all, however, the Croatian Media Incubator was “a place where you develop, learn to fight, both for yourself and for your work, a place where you can find protection,” says mentor Barbara Matejčić.

While the participants in Croatia were journalists with professional experience, the workshops in all other countries were aimed more at students and young professionals. The participants were selected through open calls and an application process. In North Macedonia, ten applicants from different parts of the country were selected for a four-day workshop with the project partner Balkan Institute for Regional Cooperation - BIRC. The program, which could only be carried out online due to the pandemic, was focused on social reporting and quality journalism and consisted of four modules, each led by an experienced journalist. Afterwards, the participants were given the opportunity to gain their first practical experience in an independent outlet in North Macedonia for a month. Another one-day workshop, which took place in a present form at the Southeast European University in Tetovo, introduced the participants to the concept of new media.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Goethe-Institut worked together with the Chair of Communication Studies and Journalism at the University of Sarajevo and in four workshops raised students' awareness of the topics of migration, discrimination against minorities and the fight against poverty. A total of 74 students then took part in a competition and wrote social reports and news articles on given topics. From these contributions, a jury of experts selected the seven best, which were further developed by the students over the next three months. In addition, the participants were given the task of explaining the term “socially responsible journalism” in a short video clip. In the final round of the competition, the jury selected the best three from the seven news reports and the best one of the six explanatory videos. At the end of this year's Media Incubator, the Goethe-Institut in Sarajevo organized a public panel discussion with four established journalists from Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina, at which the importance of reporting on social topics and the consequences of disinformation in the media were discussed.

The role and status of journalists - women journalists in particular - was also a topic in Romania. Ten students from all over the country have been selected to take part in the four-day workshop program in Bucharest - not just journalism students, but also math and foreign language students with a passion for writing and investigation. This showed that there is great interest in the topic in the region, but also that there is a need for such advanced training opportunities. The workshop program included lectures on topics such as the role of journalists in culture, but also practical exercises in which participants learned how to find good sources or how to ask questions to politicians. Then, the participants had the opportunity to put what they had learned into practice and to write their own articles. The collaboration with the project partner “Cultura la duba” and its founder, Alexandra Tanasescu, turned out to be very fruitful.

Medana Weiner from DW during the Media Incubator workshop in Romania. | Goethe-Institut Romania The Media Incubator of the leading Goethe-Institut Bulgaria had a special focus. As in 2020, when the Media Incubator was initiated in Sofia, the focus this year was once again on the exclusion and discrimination of the Roma, the largest ethnic minority in the Balkans. The aim this time was to raise the participants' awareness of the continuity of antigypsy stereotypes in the audiovisual media. The focus of the program was the research, conducted by Radmila Mladenova, research assistant at the Antiziganism Research Center at the Department of History at Heidelberg University. She has examined 120 feature films and 35 documentaries from the silent film era to current TV reports to find out the antigypsyism images they have spread. Mladenova also provided the ten workshop participants with practical guidelines on how minorities should be visually represented in audiovisual media and what questions authors should ask themselves before designing their television reports or films.

The four-day workshop also included lectures by experienced journalists and experts as well as talks with filmmakers from Germany and Bulgaria. Peter Nestler and Ljudmila Zhivkova, the country's first female Roma filmmaker, held discussions with the participants and their films were part of the “CineRoma” film program, which the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria was showing in the nearby arthouse cinema at the same time as the workshop. The desire of the participants to put what they had learned in the workshop into practice was welcomed by the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and it granted funding for projects on the topic of "How To Overcome Labels". Participants came up with ideas for podcasts, radio broadcasts, interactive art installations, exhibitions and audiovisual shows. Five of these projects were funded and are set to be launched over the next six months.

Media Incubator 2022 - what's next?
The fight against discrimination and social inequality is a marathon and not a short distance run, said one of the workshop participants in Sofia. On one hand, all five Goethe-Instituts are convinced that the training in the individual countries must be continued with their project partners on a national level. On the other hand, regional networking is also desired.

With the media partner Deutsche Welle, we therefore want to achieve this networking through increased reporting in the south-east European countries about their neighbors. The Bulgarian population knows little about the situation in Croatia and the media in Bulgaria report mostly one-sided or tendentious about North Macedonia and vice versa. So our aim is a cross-border exchange of experiences and the formation of a network of committed journalists who want to contribute to a better quiality in socially responsible journalism. This network should be what Barbara Matejčić described for her editorial team: “a place where you get support and encouragement”.

We also want to encourage cooperation with journalists and the media in Germany through a visitor trip for the mentors of the Media Incubator. How diverse are editorial offices in Germany and how is diversity promoted? How do the media in Germany deal with discrimination against minorities? Does the topic play a role in journalist trainings? What influence do immigrant media professionals have on public opinion in Germany?

The visitor trip is intended to give journalists from Southeastern Europe the opportunity to discuss these and other questions with their colleagues in Germany. At the same time, it gives German media representatives an insight into everyday journalism in Southeastern Europe.