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(Updated January 2, 2004)
  
Balkan Media Links: This website was first put up to provide Balkan
media links. Some people still visit the site for these links, so I will
continue this feature on the site. Here are some links that can give you good
information on what is happening in the Balkans from first hand sources. All
these links are for independent news services, I have not included state news
agencies or state broadcasters. With one exception I am giving you only
websites that operate in English. That exception is Radio 101, which I put on
so you can listen to its sound. I am also not including websites where access if
for a fee only. Some of the sites I list will give you headlines and some news
before you have to enter the inner realms, but you can at least get something.
For the record, I have nothing against web sites charging for their news. I
have encouraged media outlets to try to become financially self sustaining.
 | B-92 in Belgrade is the leading
independent station in
Serbia. The website has millions of visits and I
check Serbian news headlines as well as media news from Serbia daily. |
| Radio 21 in Prishtina is Kosova's
first independent station. RTV 21 has a satellite service for North
America, you can learn about it on this site s well. |
| Radio 101 in
Zagreb is
Croatia's
premiere independent radio station. This website does not have an
English page but you can listen to live audio streaming from the station. |
| Kosova Live is the
independent news agency of Kosova. The agency was helped by
IREX-ProMedia in getting started. It provides news from Kosovo in
English and Albanian. |
| MN News has news from
the MINA News Agency. |
| The Albanian Daily News is the
daily paper, in English, that came to my door every morning in Tirana.
It is a pay for use service but you can get some headlines from this service. |
| The Beta news agency is Serbia's
independent news agency, It is accurate and widely respected.
The Clean Hands website is
run by Beta and covers corruption in the region. |
| ONASA is Bosnia's independent news
agency. Click on the Union Jack for the English version. This is a
fee website but you can get headlines and the story list without paying. |
| The Belgrade
Media Center provides support to media in
Serbia. It is a good
source on media activities in Serbia. This site has good links to most
Serbian
media, including state media. |
| Corax is Yugoslavia's
most popular
cartoonist. You can get the "daily toon" from this site and also look at
some of the historic cartoons that helped fuel the fall of Milosevic. |
|
South-East European Network of
Associations of Private Broadcasters (SEENAPB) brings together 11
broadcasters’ associations from 10 countries in the region. Members of SEENAPB
are national broadcasters’ associations in Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania,
and Serbia. The association operates a news exchange between stations
and has an email newsletter of news in the region. |
| LINK is monthly magazine
targeted to decision makers in local electronic media (both radio and TV) in
Yugoslavia (Serbia including Vojvodina and Kosovo, Montenegro). It has
some English language articles on its website. |
    
European News Services: There are several news services based
outside the Balkans that can give you reliable and interesting information about
happenings in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Here are a few of them.
| The Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) Reporters living in regions where
there is conflict send very human and engaging reports. There is the
Balkan Crisis Report, a section covering the Hague International War Crimes
Tribunal, and also coverage from Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia and the Caucasus.
This is where you can get stories that help you understand what is really
happening in crisis areas. |
| Transitions On Line is a fine site that
discusses media and news reporting. It is a fee site but you can get the
service for free for a while. The service has a Balkan Reconstruction
Report. Some of the people who write for TOL are the journalists I
respect the most. |
| SITA is the
Slovakia's independent news
agency. This is a fee site, but you can get the story list for
free. |
|
CEE-BusinessLine is an
economic information service in English. As a joint product of the leading
national news agencies of Central and Eastern Europe and APA–Austria Presse
Agentur the newsfeed provides professional users with high quality business
and finance news from the CEE region. |
| The Slovak Spectator is a
weekly English language newspaper covering Central Europe. Their site is
free. |
| The BBC World Service and
BBC News are websites I visit most. The news is accurate and there is good
streaming of audio. |
| The International Herald Tribune is the
site that comes up on my browser. It contains news from the New York Times. It has stories edited for an
international readership. |
| Press Now, the
Dutch media aid agency and xs4all a free internet provider in the
Netherlands have prepared an internet art exhibit on independent media in the
former Yugoslavia. This is worth a visit. |
| The OSCE Mission in Kosovo
has a website that gives a lot of information on media in Kosovo. It lists
stations licensed, has articles of interest and also presents media monitoring
results. |
International Media Assistance and Training Agencies:
| The International Research and Exchanges
Board, (IREX) runs the ProMedia
program, the largest media assistance program in the region. It runs
programs in thirteen countries or regions. I worked on several of the
programs. IREX has just published its first
Media
Sustainability Index (MSI), which is a tool that measures the status and
sustainability of independent media in 20 post communist countries. |
| The Independent Journalism Foundation operates Centers for Independent Journalism
in Slovakia, Romania and Hungary, and has programs in other countries.
|
| The International Center for Journalists
sponsors fellowships and training for journalists world wide. The
center's IJNet gives
updated information on media training and media development around the world. |
| The South-East European Network for Professionalism of the Media
(SEENPM) links media centers from around
the region. |
| BBC World Service
Training conducts training worldwide. It has a training school in
Bosnia and runs the European School of Broadcast Journalism in Yugoslavia,
with a center in Belgrade. |
| The Baltic Media Center is a media
development and training organization funded by the Danes and operates
throughout the region. |
| Internews runs media training and
development programs throughout the world. |
| Freedom House runs democracy
programs throughout the world, they have opportunities for volunteers and
publish the annual
State of Freedom Country Ratings that are an indicator of the progress of
democratic development. |
| Press Now is the Dutch media aid
organization. It operates programs in the Balkans and Belarus. |
| The Soros Foundations operate media
programs through their national foundations in each country in the region.
Further the Open Society Institute Media
Network runs regional media support throughout the region. Soros has
been a big player in the media development field. |
| The United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) funds, or has funded, many of the media development
programs, including IREX-ProMedia,
ICFJ,
Freedom House, and
Internews. |
| While not exactly a media training agency the
Citizen's Democracy Corps is the
organization that got us involved in assistance work. If you want to
volunteer overseas, this is a good place to look. |
| The Novi Sad School of Journalism
Models of Best Practice: The Novi Sad School of Journalismhas an
innovative program that involves young people and working journalists. |
| Ellen Hume is a media analyst and a
journalist. She has written a history of international media development
entitled "The Media Missionaries: American
Support for International Journalism." you can read it by going to
her website http://www.ellenhume.com. |
  
   
Media Monitoring: Monitoring is an important tool we have to
keep media honest. In Kosovo media is monitored regularly by the
OSCE office of the Temporary Media
Commissioner but those results are not posted on their website
currently. Here are some other sites that have media monitoring results.
| Memo 98 is an organization founded by
law students. They regularly monitor media in Slovakia and have
conducted media monitoring in Belarus and
Serbia. They have many of the
reports in English. Memo also hosts the old
ProMedia Slovakia
site. |
| The Belgrade Media Center Media Monitoring Program is funded by IREX and
monitors Serbian media regularly and every several months the center monitors
for specific issues in the media, such as coverage of religious organizations.
Clink on the monitoring icon for the latest report. |
| The Committee to Protect Journalists
monitors media in a different way. It looks at attacks by governments on
media and reports on that. |
| Reporters Without Borders (Reporters
Sans Frontiers) also monitors attacks on reporters. |
  
Alaska: There are so many possibilities for
Alaska but I will just give you a few to get started, most of them are in our
own home town of Sitka.
 
One other Link:
| KAXE is the station that Suzi and I, and
several other people started back in 1976, twenty five years and still
going strong. |
updated on
August 24, 2004
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