A discussion with a commenter here on Window on the Media pushed me to write the database journalism article on Wikipedia.
Database journalism was born in the 1950’s as a synonym for computer-assisted reporting. Since then, computers have become ubiquitous, to the point that database journalism in its original meaning has come to merge with the [...]

In 2003, Austrian publisher Styria came into Slovenia with a weekly, Zurnal. Its 12 journalists produced mediocre content and its management’s lack of strategy didn’t allow for Zurnal to tap into Slovenia’s advertising tolars.
4 years later, in 2007, Styria decided to shake things up. It launched a free daily, Zurnal24, combined with a real website, [...]

My favorite news website, Wikipedia, is funded exclusively with its readers’ money (except in Germany). And I don’t need to tell you it’s not subscriptions.
Is the Wikipedia model replicable for news websites? I know of a few experiments that I’m sharing below:
1. Hetq.am This independent Armenian site made a call to its readers, begging them [...]

It’s common wisdom in the online world to say that the 1st mover has a definitive advantage, all the more if it’s competing against a foreign player.
That’s what anyone close to Seznam (Czech #1 search engine), Yandex (Russia) or Baidu (China) will tell you. Social networks also have their regional champions, such as Vkontakte in [...]

In the Southern Balkans, there’s a country as small as Vermont that hopes to become the new IT hotspot in Europe. Macedonia’s government is following Estonia in trying to develop a wired society; but so far, there’s little sign of a Silicon Vardar (Macedonia’s valley) in the making.
(Really) pushing for online
In 2005, the Macedonian government, [...]

When you study the impact of the internet in foreign countries, one key factor is internet penetration. Now, this figure often comes from government agencies, especially if a country’s too small to excite interest from international monitoring agencies (whether it is Nielsen or the UN).
These government agencies have an agenda: if investments have been made [...]

This is an old rant about my time at the University of East Anglia, in 2007/2008. I’d published it last year and my friend Seamus kindly linked to it, but somehow the article has disappeared from the Google index. Here’s a slightly updated version aimed at googling prospective students.

You probably know that Armenia was the first country in Europe to convert to Christianity. Did you know it was the last country in Europe to shoot dead protestors in the street?
This environment – a highly educated, diasporic population facing a harsh political situation – is a Petri dish for news outlets. Maybe that’s why [...]

In 2001, a group of bright, young Georgians realized that the only news you could get online came from news agencies or TV stations. Giorgi Sepashvili and his team aimed at bringing independent news to the web and started Civil Georgia.
Bringing news to Georgia – and beyond
Journalism in post-soviet states often reminds of cold-blooded murders, [...]

I’ve been writing here that what lacks most in Eastern European online media is easy access to capital. Lots of young journalists are eager to benefit from the web’s low barriers to entry to take over a traditional media landscape run by corrupt curmudgeons. All they need is cash.
With this in mind, I visited last [...]