mdlf media development loan fund first fifteen years

mdlf media development loan fund first fifteen years

mdlf media development loan fund first fifteen years
Copyright © April, 2010 by
Media Development Loan Fund, Inc.
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Table of contents
Introduction The Big Bang Theory of MDLF by Saša Vučinić 08
Timeline 1995 10
1996 12
1997 14
1998 18
1999 20
2000 22
2001 28
2002 30
2003 32
2004 38
2005 40
2006 42
2007 46
2008 48
2009 50
2010 52
Essays Social contracts, loan contracts, and integrity by Endre Bojtar 16
Building a financial theology out of dignity & freedom by José Rubén Zamora 24
How will we fund the Fourth Estate? by Bernard Poulet 34
Is the Internet a threat to journalism? by Steven Gan 44
CENTER FOR ADVANCED MEDIA PRAGUE Find a way or make one 54
Indonesian Radio Ending the isolation by Santoso 56
People 60
Investors & Contributors 62
Board of Directors 63
Offices 64
 08
The Big Bang Theory of MDLF
Buried in the depth of every organization’s institutional memory, a founding legend –
a treasured story explaining the organization’s “big bang” – can always be unearthed.
MDLF was blessed with a wonderful big bang: At two meetings held
over a period of nine months, George Soros refused to fund the project
code-named “media bank.” At the end of a third meeting, on the
beautiful morning of May 1, 1995, on a bench in the only park of the
provincial town of Presov, in Slovakia, he finally agreed to take the risk
(more to his reputation than to his funds). “It is not going to work,” he
told me. “But I will give you a rope to hang yourself. My foundation will
Introduction
invest the first $500,000 to test the idea.” With those words, what later
became MDLF was given life.
Later, I called Stuart Auerbach, a longtime Washington Post reporter and
my partner in crime in the imagining of the media development bank.
“Houston, we have a problem,” I said. “GS agreed to fund the project
with half a million. There is no way back now.”
“Now that we are in business, we first have to buy you a pin-striped
suit,” Stu roared with delight. “You can’t possibly be a banker
without one.” So, this is MDLF’s “big bang” story. This is how the
adventure started.
The first meeting with lawyers brought the end to the idea of having
the word “bank” in the name of the new organization. “Too much
regulation,” we were told. “Replace it with the word ‘fund.’ ”
Fine. The words “media” and “development” made it to the name
unopposed. To leave no doubt about what will be our “core business,”
we added the word “loan” to this mix. Voila: Media Development
Loan Fund. That’s how we arrived at, as one branding expert told me
a decade and a half later, probably the dullest and most uninspiring
name ever given to a functioning organization.
But I have to admit, in mid-1995 we did not think about the name for
more than several minutes. The kind of name to give your dream did not
appear to be important at all. The dream itself was the only important
thing – to create a media development bank. To our surprise, nothing of
that kind existed, although it was obvious to us that it was badly needed.
The countries of Eastern and Central Europe were in the midst of incred-
ibly painful transitions, shaking off the leftovers of authoritarian pasts,
while Yugoslavia was convulsing in bloody civil war. Media was playing
a main supporting role in all events in the region. In some countries the
media’s role was disgraceful and horrific, in others brave and honorable.
In most of the countries it was a mixed bag. But it was beyond dispute
that for the first time in the history of this region, a philosophy, a move-
ment, a process that could be defined as “independent media” emerged.
And it badly needed help to take root. It badly needed all kinds of assis-
tance, but above all, we thought, affordable and “no-strings attached”
financing, to level the playing field and allow it to compete with its
“dependent competitors” in order to survive. Could there be a more
obvious solution to this problem than a media development bank?
Now I know why it looked so simple to us fifteen years ago – we had
no idea how huge a goal we were aiming to achieve. Our first miscon-
ception was in thinking that we should build an institution of a rigidly
financial nature. No grants, no “assistance mentality,” no handouts.
We should deliberately insist on a pure businesslike approach, and stick
only to the business of lending money to independent media companies.
Fifteen years, a hundred million dollars, and more than two hundred
projects later, we know better. Yes, we do lend money, but that is
certainly not the only thing we do. Today we know that the most
important thing we do – which is not at all so obvious – is facilitate
the transfer of highly specialized knowledge about managing media
to our clients. The low-cost financing that we provide is by itself not
enough. It is the media expertise we attach to it that makes all the
difference. It’s not the money; it is the wrapper in which the money
comes that makes the package so effective.
We started to build a rigidly focused bank, but over time we ended up
creating a not-for-profit mix between a venture capital and revolving
loan fund, with an “added value activity” of knowledge transfer.
How and why did that change happen? Well, you may get an idea of the
answer if you take a look into the pages that follow. They aim to provide
a time-travel review of the past fifteen years of MDLF’s existence.
These were turbulent and eventful years for the parts of the world in
which we work. Countries were liberated or disappeared, wars were
fought. Elections were won, lost, or stolen. Democracy had its good
days, but also periods of retreat. Epidemics and pandemics erupted and
disappeared. The world went through the currency crisis of 1997 in Asia,
the ruble collapse, and, a decade later, the global financial meltdown.
In the field of media, the changes could not have been more dramatic.
From the birth of the Internet, the first websites, and new media to the
founding of Google, YouTube, and the launching of the iPad, the media
industry was spinning out of control. Known business models collapsed in
front of the eyes (or should I say eyeballs) of new “electronic audiences.”
Swimming in this sea of change, the only way to keep MDLF relevant
was to constantly rethink it, change it, adapt it, and fine-tune it.
MDLF began each one of its fifteen years slightly modified, retooled;
and different.
But there was one thing that did not change during those fifteen
years – our understanding of who our clients are, and the basis of
our relationship with them.
We understand that we are in the business of giving a chance to
those dedicated, smart, and independent people whose mission in
life is to make their part of the world a better place through providing
their communities with unfiltered, fact-based, independent, and
professionally produced information. They are providing a space
in which different voices can participate in discussions and set the
social agenda; providing voters with meaningful information; and
giving voice to those who otherwise would be voiceless. We provide
financing for their dreams and ambitions. We invest in their voices.
Hence, the most important legacy of our work – I think – is the
creation of an amazing network of clients: an incredible collection
of independent media companies, over eighty at this moment, and
the people working for them. All of them are striving to be fiercely
independent, striving to conduct their media business by adhering to
the highest standards of professionalism and led by a mission to
serve their communities instead of simply to maximize profits.
The whole purpose of MDLF’s existence is to be the institution of
financial support and knowledge support for this network, and to
help the network expand.
Great idea, great vision, great mission, great clients, great execution –
it does not really matter how many great things one can line up together
in one project. All of that greatness is absolutely meaningless unless
one manages to attract a group of smart, creative, and commited
people who will adopt the idea and give life to the organization: make
it tick, load it with different ideas and new ways of thinking, make it
diversified with different types of mindsets, creativity, and approaches.
MDLF has been incredibly lucky in this respect.
Very early on, an amazing group of people got together to build MDLF.
Some of them served as staff, some served on our board, and some
were just friends who were helping the idea and the organization from
a distance. It is impossible to name them all, but it is possible, we
thought, to give them a chance to share a smile from the pages of this
publication (see pages 60–61).
I am not going to lie and say it was easy for us to bring MDLF to where
it is now: our businesslike philosophy to media assistance recognized;
our investment approach proven to obtain outstanding results; and our
own business model allowing us not only to reach self-sustainability
three years ago but also to create a sizable “quasi-endowment” to
subsidize future projects. The truth is that we’ve also seen our fair
share of arguments and resignations, tears and self-doubt, impatience
and disbelief. To illustrate that point: for our fifth anniversary, we
made T-shirts that read “Our biggest achievement so far is that we are
still in business.”
I close the circle by bringing this story back to its beginning – to the
man without whom MDLF could not have happened. George Soros
put a bit of his funds and a lot of his reputation at risk backing up
a project that he thought would fail. By doing that, in addition to
giving MDLF life, he also gave us a lesson to remember – nothing is
impossible. We have tried to imprint that same philosophy into MDLF’s
mindset, as that is how we look at every funding proposal we receive.
Anything else would be a betrayal of our own big bang.
SaŠa Vučinić
Co-Founder and Managing Director, MDLF
 10
1995

Writer and MDLF formed Prime minister Vladimir Amazon starts Eduard Shevardnadze Srebrenica massacre US and international
environmental activist Meciar assumes presidential selling books online; elected president organizations bail out
Ken Saro-Wiwa powers in Slovakia, prompting Yahoo and eBay of Georgia Mexico with $50 billion
hanged in Nigeria street demonstrations and formed in loans and guarantees
EU condemnation
 SME Newspaper Slovakia

$250,000
Israeli prime Newspaper Croatian offensives Ukraine joins First free daily, Signing of Dayton
minister Yitzhak readership in US take Krajina from rebel Council of Europe Metro, launched in Peace Accords brings
Rabin assassinated begins to decline Serb forces and force Stockholm end to Bosnia War
mass Serb exodus Total financing provided
 12
1996

Yoweri Museveni Ukraine adopts Al Jazeera starts Russian President Boris Optical fiber cable Truth and Reconciliation Commission First Chechen
wins first direct first democratic broadcasting Yeltsin wins narrow election extended across chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu War ends
presidential constitution since victory over Communists Pacific begins hearings into human rights
election in Uganda independence violations during apartheid

Taliban take Kabul Hundreds of thousands
demonstrate in Serbia after
local election fraud and
dissatisfaction with President
Slobodan Milosevic
Novi list Newspaper Croatia
SME Newspaper Slovakia
$975,000
Radovan Karadzic Guatemalan 36 million
resigns as president government and Internet users
of Republika Srpska guerrillas sign peace
after being indicted accord, ending 36 Total financing provided
for war crimes years of civil war
 14
1997

Asian financial Mobutu Sese Seko steps First blog – Dave Winer’s Former Chinese Tony Blair becomes Streaming audio Kyoto Protocol on
crisis strikes as down as president of Zaire Scripting News – appears paramount leader prime minister of UK, and video become Climate Change
economies collapse after 32 years; country Deng Xiaoping dies ending 18 years of available online adopted
and currencies are renamed Democratic Conservative rule
devalued Republic of Congo
 A1 TV Television FYR Macedonia
Feral Tribune Magazine Croatia
RTV Bajina Basta Radio FR Yugoslavia
Sembrani Printing house Indonesia
SME Newspaper Slovakia
Vijesti Newspaper FR Yugoslavia

$3,419,390
Milo Djukanovic Above: Hun Sen Use of MP3 files Wave of unrest at Control of Hong Kong Liberal cleric Seyed
elected president of overthrows Cambodian begins to spread economic collapse handed back to China Mohammad Khatami
Montenegro, defeating prime minister Prince threatens Indonesian elected president
Slobodan Milosevic- Norodom Ranariddh president Suharto’s of Iran Total financing provided
backed candidate in coup leadership
 16
Social contracts, loan contracts, and integrity
When the Iron Curtain came down, the citizens of Eastern Europe no longer had an excuse to
disengage from their governments. Now, from constitutions to loan agreements, the contracts
we make with others govern our relationship with the world.
In 1989 and the early 1990s, when the reborn states of Eastern
Europe set out to write their new constitutions free from any
outside constraints and coercion, their people entered a whole
new universe.
I am not referring to the most obvious aspect of these constitutions–
namely, that by granting basic political and individual rights they
established a new form of government, where we, the people, in a
free political competition elect those who will make our laws, do the
daily work of governing, and deliver justice in a fair way – but to the
fact that the constitutions were the result of a common, democratic
effort. (Or at least they were accepted by the majority of the voters
in subsequent elections.)
The social contract was reconstructed, or rather constructed. There is
one, general, written agreement, binding for all citizens of the land.
It is not someone else’s making, but yours too. So you are a party to
Essay
it. You have the right to alter it – as much of a right as the person
next to you. You have your vote, and you have your voice.
The implications of this act were far-reaching. It has changed our
relations to almost everything that lies outside us – and inside,
for that matter.
In pre-1989 times you could always say with good reason: The world
I live in does not concern me. I was not asked, so there is no agree-
ment between me and my country, me and the community. Between
me and anybody. I am not involved, therefore I am not implicated.
If everything is a lie, I am free to lie too. I might be forced to behave,
to keep the law – but to respect it? It was even an honor to dodge it.
After 1989 this excuse lost its validity. The justification to breach
the law vanished. You became a free citizen of a free country and
you were given all your rights, all empowerments to negotiate your
terms. Instead of some illegitimate power, it was your choices that
came to govern your life. And this concerns not just our relationship
with the government but our interactions with our fellow citizens
too. We had to start making contracts on a daily basis. This has not
been an easy lesson.
You had to learn what it takes to make a contract and to be a party
to an agreement. You have to know yourself and the world outside
you. To negotiate the best possible terms, you have to know the
other party and recognize where his interests, weaknesses, and
powers lie. You have to have a fairly accurate idea about your own
limitations and your would-be partner’s. You have to have a proper
sense of time – a firm conviction that there will be a week after the
next one. And that two or even three weeks from now you might
have to deal with the very same people you deal with today.
You try to make promises that you can deliver, or at least you can
imagine that you will be able to deliver. Otherwise you will be
treated as a cheat, and sooner or later no one will want to have
anything to do with you. The contracts you make every day define
you. The sum of your personality is the content of all your contracts,
be they oral or written. It is what the other parties expect you to be,
since this is what you said and signed you would be.
After all, you are a cheat if you do not deliver.
I hope it is somewhat clearer now why, being asked to contribute to
this volume on the subject of integrity, I am saying all this. It was in
1998 when I fully understood this. This was the year when Magyar
Narancs approached MDLF for help. Narancs had been leading an
easy life up to that point; we were a creative community of young,
talented writers and journalists living on soft money, and practically
without any responsibility.
Even their naïveté, in retrospect, seems well calculated. An element
of MDLF’s corporate culture? You have a bunch of honest people,
mostly very far away, who do not interfere as long as you perform
more or less the way you said you would. The best owners any media
outlet could wish for. It would be shameful not to pay them back.
We broke even.

But sooner or later soft money always dries up. When this moment I am pleased that they have too.
arrived and we found MDLF, their behavior seemed odd: this was
the first time when serious questions on circulation, ad sales, Endre Bojtar
price policy, readership, costs, quality of reporting, and corporate Editor-in-Chief, Magyar Narancs
organization were asked. All in fact concerned our own capabilities,
the ways we operate and think about ourselves. Our own selves.
Negotiating and writing the loan agreement became an exercise in
self-knowledge.

MDLF seemed naïve, even to the point of stupidity. These guys

could not decide whether they were a charity or a venture, so they
chose to be both. No guarantees, no mortgages, no death threats –
a rather strange business philosophy for a loan-providing institution
in Eastern Europe. How on earth could they think they would get
back even one cent?

It took some time to realize that this could work. If you are treated
seriously, you soon start taking yourself seriously too. And then –
just about everybody does. Your readers, your partners, your topics,
your articles. Once the loan agreement said who we were, what our
possibilities were, and how we were supposed to operate, we had
to live up to it. We were someone. And if they trusted us, how could
we not have trusted ourselves? (Running a big debt brings its own
seriousness anyway.)
 18
1998

First major news event Malaysian prime minister
broken by blogger: Mahathir Mohamad sacks
Drudge Report reveals deputy Anwar Ibrahim on
Clinton-Lewinsky affair charges of sexual misconduct;
Ibrahim arrested
Google Serbian security Truth and Reconciliation Mass demonstrations Russian financial MDLF founds
founded forces intensify Commission report brands end Indonesian crisis and ruble CAMP
military crackdown South African apartheid a dictator Suharto’s collapse
on Kosovo crime against humanity 30-year rule
separatists
 Beta Press News agency FR Yugoslavia
Chelyabinski Rabochyi Newspaper Russia
Danas Newspaper FR Yugoslavia
Express Newspaper Ukraine
Feral Tribune Magazine Croatia
MIG Newspaper Russia
Radio Beta Radio Slovakia
Radio Pleven Plus Radio Bulgaria
Vijesti Newspaper FR Yugoslavia

$5,607,914
Center-right coalition Above: Autocratic prime South African and General Augusto International Criminal
under Viktor Orban minister Vladimir Meciar Botswanan troops Pinochet of Chile indicted Court established
elected in Hungary loses election, sparking occupy Lesotho “to by Spain for human rights
mass celebrations in restore democracy atrocities, arrested in Total financing provided
Slovakia and rule of law” England
 20
1999

248 million Olusegun Obasanjo Kosovo War: NATO bombs Hugo Chávez Gunmen open fire on China announces Nelson Mandela
Internet users elected president of Federal Republic of inaugurated Armenian parliament, severe government stands down as
Nigeria, ending 33 Yugoslavia as president of killing Prime Minister restrictions on president of South
years of military rule Venezuela Vazgen Sargsyan and Internet use Africa and is replaced
seven others by Thabo Mbeki
 Altapress Newspaper Russia
Chelyabinski RabochyI Newspaper Russia
Dani Magazine Bosnia and Herzegovina
Express Newspaper Ukraine
Feral Tribune Magazine Croatia
KBR68H Radio network Indonesia
Magyarnarancs Magazine Hungary
Novi list Newspaper Croatia
Radio Drina Radio network Bosnia and Herzegovina
Vijesti Newspaper FR Yugoslavia

$10,453,547
Militias go on rampage Above: Peace agreement in Apartment bombings Croatian president Boris Yeltsin resigns
after East Timor votes Indonesia’s first Sierra Leone leads kill 300 in Russia Franjo Tudjman dies as president of Russian
for independence – free presidential to end of decade of and spark Second Federation and appoints
UN administration elections won by civil war Chechen War Vladimir Putin as Total financing provided
established Abdurrahman Wahid successor
 22
2000

Alfonso Portillo Internet-capable George W. Bush declared Vladimir Putin AOL merges with First peaceful transfers of Following death of
sworn in as president mobile phones sold victor after disputed US elected president of Time Warner power in African democracies Croatian president Franjo
of Guatemala for first time in Japan presidential vote count Russian Federation as Abdoulaye Wade in Tudjman, ruling HDZ party
in Florida Dot-com Senegal and John Kufuor in loses elections and hands
industry crash Ghana win elections power to Social Democrats
 Altapress Newspaper Russia
Ammannet Radio network Jordan
ATV Stavropol Television Russia
Chelyabinski Rabochyi Newspaper Russia
Drik Picture Library Photo agency & Internet service
provider Bangladesh
Eisk TV Television Russia
El Periodico Newspaper Guatemala
FNR Radio network Russia
KBR68H Radio network Indonesia
Nepal Radio network Radio network Nepal
Novi list Newspaper Croatia
Transitions online Web publication Czech Republic
TV2 Tomsk Television Russia

$14,113,427
Palestinian- Ethnic Albanians Above: Chinese search engine Following mass Corruption case
Israeli conflict seeking greater President Alberto Baidu formed demonstrations, against former
known as recognition launch Fujimori offers FR Yugoslavia Indonesian
Second armed insurgency resignation and flees Google starts selling president Slobodan president Suharto Total financing provided
Intifada begins in FYR Macedonia Peru for Japan text ads Milosevic resigns collapses
 24

Building a financial theology out of dignity & freedom

The press played an ambiguous role in Guatemala’s four decades of war. It supported military
dictators yet also helped usher in peace. With the democracy it helped establish far from perfect,
the press now faces new challenges – top of the list is financial viability.

In the former Soviet Bloc it was known as the Cold War. In Latin
America we suffered a “hot war.” In Guatemala alone, a small nation
located on the waist of the Americas which is home to twenty-two
indigenous groups, more than two million lives were lost, including
our most prominent intellectual, political, and social leaders. Eighty
journalists were slaughtered. Intolerance depleted the moral reserves
of the nation.
We witnessed outrageous savagery and horror. We were told that
the struggle was between Communism and anti-Communism, and
on behalf of this cause freedoms were suffocated, humiliating regimes
established, and unwritten restrictions on social mobility imposed.
We were told that we were defending democracy, but in reality we
lived under the motto “Who is not with me is against me.” We were
told that all this was to gain freedom, even though our rural societies
were still feudal and our so-called modern centers lived by the rules
of mercantilism, a system where privilege and protectionism went
Essay
In 1996 a peace treaty was signed after four decades of a war that
witnessed every crime. But the roots of the confrontation – Latin
America’s social inequality, the absence of a market economy, and
outrageous racism – remain. I am not optimistic about our future.
Why? Our political culture is still heavily loaded with authoritarianism
and intransigence. We attained electoral democracy, but not civic
democracy in all its different expressions: social, cultural, and economic.
The press has played an ambiguous role. It helped to shepherd the
transition process toward democracy after having been an accom-
plice by either conviction or fear – with a few notable exceptions –
of military dictatorships. It has tried to transform itself but has still
not adapted fully to the new environment: being openly critical and
independent runs against financial viability.
Nevertheless, the press has made an essential contribution to
democracy. It opened pluralistic debate and modernized thinking,
and incompetence, as well as see the results of their actions.
It provided an interface between the public and information that
used to be the closely guarded property of the state.
Now the challenges facing the press are different: how to acquire
independence from official and extra-parliamentary political powers,
and how to establish financial viability so that it can live up to the
proud tradition of freedom of expression and information – one of
the most expensive traditions in our civilizations.
The press has both been a witness to the last fifteen years of our
intense history, and a promoter of change, especially in the develop-
ment of civil and political rights. It has not only revealed in great
detail – like a close-up photograph – the miseries of power but also
the generosity of the human spirit.
While the Berlin Wall was falling, another wall was falling in Guate-

hand-in-hand with anti-competitive behavior. In other words, we leading us away from the seclusion of dictatorships. The press mala: the suppression of independent thought. In those days, there
had a type of corrupt regime that can exist even in democracies. created a platform from which citizens could denounce corruption were two independent news outlets – the magazine Crónica and the
newspaper Siglo Veintiuno – which broke with self-censorship and
established a commitment to tolerance, democracy, and respect for
both the law and human rights. They also kept their distance from –
and showed a lack of respect toward – the established powers,
and included criticism and pluralistic views in their editorials.
Their impact was tremendous on the political culture of Guatemala
but it was very short: little more than a decade. Crónica died in 1998
as a result of an advertising boycott led by ex-president Álvaro Arzú
(who a year before had signed the Peace Agreements). A short time
before this, Siglo Veintiuno became more conservative, following
a disagreement among its members in response to pressure by
ex-president Arzú. This disagreement led to the founding to my
newspaper, elPeriódico.
Today we live in a democracy and the war has ended, but difficulties
in building democracy are huge. The power of the mafia is boundless
and threatens to turn our democracy into a parody. Behind the
facade we show to the world, inequality and aberrant poverty
persist, and delinquency, corruption, and impunity flourish.
The judicial system and Parliament carry too little weight in the life
of the country. Judges and public prosecutors act in accordance
with military interests, organized crime, corrupt businessmen, and
on-call governors. Impunity and violence are still deep-rooted in the
foundations of our weak democratic culture. Our leaders, in alliance
with private, military, and criminal interests, line their own pockets,
leaving aside the causes they promised to fight for.
Unfortunately, the market economy is not the most powerful force
in Guatemala. Instead, it is criminal organizations whose tentacles
spread across key institutions, such as the army, customs, ports,
police, courts, public prosecutors’ offices, and political parties.
They jointly rule our democracy. One fact that helps explain the
intolerable pressure of organized crime in Guatemala is that eighty
percent of drugs that end up in the US have their final warehouse
in my country.
ElPeriódico was born on November 6, 1996, pioneered by a group
of journalists who were forced to abandon the newspaper Siglo
Veintiuno. They would not give up the struggle for freedom of
expression, pluralism, respect for human rights, demilitarization, and
cleaning up public life. Three years previous, these journalists had
forced Congress and the Supreme Court of Justice to be purged –
an event that concluded with the resignation of the 116 legislators
and the Court of Justice in full, who resisted censure and caused the
failure of the coup promoted by President Jorge Serrano, who, in the
style of President Fujimori of Peru, wanted to centralize the power of
the government.
The process of transition from dictatorship to democracy and from
a mercantilist economy to a market economy has not crystallized.
What has been firmly established in Guatemala is an electoral
klepto-dictatorship that has its own beginning and ending every four
years. The struggle for democracy has only not its financial costs but
also intimidation and threats. Our publication has survived several
acts of violence, including dynamite and grenade attacks.
In that context, you can understand the difficulties surrounding the
introduction of elPeriódico. The first challenge was to work out how
to build a newspaper that demanded an investment of $3 million,
when among the founders we could only gather $10,000. The
klepto-dictator of the time, Arzú, regarded us with suspicion because
of our independence. The industrial elite, the most powerful group
 26
in the country, was not willing to support a handful of dreamers
who believed in what they were preaching: freedom, democracy, the
market, competitiveness. With all credit frozen and without a capital
market, we gambled that in Guatemala there might be nontraditional
capitalists willing to invest in a media business that was not tied to
the interests that have restrained growth; after all, democracy is also
an investment where the market freely flourishes.
Among our friends, we identified 300 people capable of investing
$10,000 each in an independent media company. Over two months,
we visited those 300 possible investors; 140 of them took the risk
and we gathered $1.4 million, a little bit less than half needed.
We started anyway.
With the first $20,000 gathered, we made the first payment on
a rotary press, the full price of which was sixty times that amount.
The next $10,000 was for renting offices and a warehouse where
we installed the printing plant, other equipment, and stored
newsprint. With another $10,000, we created an ambitious
database of 50,000 families of a similar socio-economic status,
who would be our potential customers. We hired the best
administrative and journalistic personnel we could find.
By identifying with our principles, many journalists joined us,
sacrificing their incomes. After five months, a new independent
newspaper was circulating on the streets.
Surviving on such precarious financial foundations, we had to think
creatively. No one believed, because it had not been tested, in
pre-paid advertising packages, even less in a mass medium which
did not exist. We capitalized elPeriódico with $250,000 through that
Essay
formula, which gave us some stability. Today, this practice represents
an annual income of $1,500,000.
We went beyond the boundaries of investigative journalism.
In our part of the world, a reporter usually reports plain facts and
transcibes statements. There is no opportunity to analyze, compare
sources, and go to the core of a phenomenon, nor to explore
causes and effects. It is not cheap to do and, because of a lack of
experience, we did not have the qualified personnel to carry it out.
It was in every sense – financial, methodological, human resources –
an impressive challenge. Today, however, I can proudly say that we
have created the first practical school of investigative journalism.
The powerful elites remain concerned by what we do – revealing
their hidden stories and exposing corruption. For the rest, there is a
change in the public debate agenda. It is no longer established by
the government only.
Another contribution to journalistic culture has been elPeriódico’s
Sunday supplement, one of the most prestigious cultural magazines
in Central America and, without any doubt, the liveliest Guatemala
has had. We set up this supplement despite a total government ad-
vertising boycott, and a hidden government campaign to remove pri-
vate advertisers – a defamatory and calumnious campaign personally
led by ex-president Arzú against the president of elPeriódico, whom
he publicly and privately accused of being Communist, a radical-right
apologist, a drug trafficker, a spokesman for smugglers, etc.
All this took place in a country where the concentration of wealth, as
well as political, military, and criminal power, maintains a severe and
constant pressure on the freedom of the press. We aggressively made
a joint venture with Prensa Libre, the country’s leading newspaper
publisher. This meant selling sixty percent of our shares to that pub-
lisher but zealously guarding publishing independence. While this joint
venture lasted, elPeriódico was forced to hand its printing house over
to Prensa Libre, together with its forty percent interest in a separate
successful popular newspaper that the elPeriódico team had origi-
nated. Later, Prensa Libre offered to buy our shares, and in response
we proposed that we have a first option to buy back from Prensa Libre
full control of elPeriódico, with the condition that, should we not be
able to complete the purchase by a set deadline, Prensa Libre would
be entitled to buy full control of elPeriódico on the same terms.
We offered: a) $1,000,000; b) freeing Prensa Libre of its guarantee
of elPeriódico’s $2,000,000 debt to local banks, by replacing it with
new guarantees; and c) a monthly payment of $80,000 for Prensa
Libre to continue printing elPeriódico. Prensa Libre accepted the
offer. ElPeriódico proposed to pay the $1,000,000 by giving Prensa
Libre that value of advertisement space in its own pages for four
years. The offer was accepted after a process of discussions, with a
good shot of mistrust from both sides, took place.
As regards replacing Prensa Libre’s guarantee with the banks,
elPeriódico suggested to both financial institutions holding the debts
that instead of a single guarantee they would accept 120 separate
guarantees of around $17,000 each. As the banks, surprisingly,
accepted the proposal, we identified 120 people who were able to
provide the guarantees. Application forms and legal documents were
filled in for each person and then we visited them. They, willingly
and without any condition, gave their guarantees to the banks.
As regards the monthly payment of $80,000 for printing, and in
order to cover the first month, a donation from Fundación Soros was
obtained. For the next three months, we sold pre-paid advertising
packages, and for the next quarter, an international development
agency that supports NGOs in areas such as democracy, transparency,
and human rights financed an investment in elPeriódico on behalf
of a number of such NGOs. By this means, elPeriódico obtained
$160,000. In order to guarantee the viability of our journalistic
project, it was necessary to find the support of either a partner or
a solid financial institution that could provide fresh capital and/or a
loan under reasonable conditions, in the amount that, at that time,
was estimated at $1,800,000. By doing so, we wanted to partially
replace the local loans subject to high interest rates and very short
terms, and also secure working capital to finish the project and
strengthen its financial structure – hence, providing the foundations
of its publishing independence.
We found and submitted an application to Media Development Loan
Fund. Its philosophy is also ours: commitment to freedom of expres-
sion, democracy, respect for human rights, and supervision of public
power. We met its criteria as an independent media business with
potential for financial success.
MDLF operates as a non-profit investment bank, providing loans
to its clients at low interest rates or making capital investments,
along with managerial training and technical assistance. More than
a simple lender or investor, MDLF gets involved in a long-term close
relationship, which begins with the implementation process to its
financial support program.
In the case of elPeriódico, MDLF got closely involved in all our prob-
lems, starting with the development of a five-year business plan,
which is monitored on a monthly basis, and the complex negotiations
carried out with Prensa Libre. It has sent experts in all business areas
and developed the organization to face critical environments.
Even more significant, we have been accompanied, physically and
morally, by MDLF throughout the risky events that we have faced
over the past eight years. From financial complications to pro-
government aggression, threats by presidents, fiscal persecution,
and assaults on our physical integrity. This has been a key factor in
allowing us to stay – despite our extreme precariousness – over the
past years of recession and economic regression.
It is still hard for us to believe that we have already overcome the
twelve months of 2009 – the most dramatic, complex,and delicate
months of our business-related and journalistic history. Only the
serenity, faith, confidence, experience, humaneness, and encourage-
ment of Sasa Vucinic, Harlan Mandel, Jaroslaw Gora, Elena Popovic,
Majka Nemcova, and the entire group of MDLF allowed us to find
shelter in a safe harbor. Today, we are an enterprise on the threshold
of a year that promises to be the best in our history, by creating
content for us and third parties, for traditional and new audiences,
through both conventional and new digital platforms.
In my personal case, by taking part in discussions and forums, most
of them at MDLF’s invitation, I have been able to understand that I
was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after an armed assault
on my home in 2003 and my kidnapping and attempted murder
at the end of 2008 – all of which had lasting effects, though I am
beating them and, therefore, taking back control of my life.
In all these efforts, we have held on to God and extraordinary
friends with imagination and a firm belief that only the impossible is
what remains to be done. But, especially, we have counted on MDLF
for being successful. From these principles of freedom and dignity,
we have created a financial theology that has turned out to be dar-
ing and extraordinarily creative – one that we are still here to talk
about and keep believing in.
José Rubén Zamora
President, elPeriódico, Guatemala
 28
2001

US leads invasion Slobodan Milosevic arrested and MDLF holds first China joins World Silvio Berlusconi Georgian president Eduard Nepalese royal New Partnership for
of Afghanistan extradited to The Hague for trial Media Forum Trade Organization elected prime Shevardnadze sacks massacre leaves Africa’s Development
by International Criminal Tribunal minister of Italy government after street ten dead as Prince (NEPAD) launched to
for former Yugoslavia demonstrations in support of Gyanendra inherits promote economic
private TV station Rustavi 2 throne development
 B92 Television, Radio, Online FR Yugoslavia
Express Newspaper Ukraine
Malaysiakini Online publication Malaysia
Media Works Internet service provider FR Yugoslavia
Onogost Magazine FR Yugoslavia
Parma novosti Newspaper Russia
Premier Newspaper Russia
Radio Ecclesia Radio Angola
Radio Rota Radio Czech Republic
Reporter Magazine Bosnia and Herzegovina
TV2 Tomsk Television Russia
Vijesti Newspaper FR Yugoslavia

$20,221,952
Gazprom takes over Megawati Sukarnoputri Dozens arrested Ukrainian prime minister September 11 attack Wikipedia
NTV, Russia’s only sworn in as president in Malaysia during Viktor Yushchenko’s on US by al-Qaeda launched
national non-state of Indonesia as clashes between government dismissed after
TV company Abdurrahman Wahid is Malays and ethnic losing no-confidence vote Total financing provided
removed from office Indians
 30
2002

Jonas Savimbi dies, Google News released President Robert Mugabe Euro launches East Timor gains President Alvaro Uribe of
ending UNITA’s wins fifth term in office as independence Colombia declares state of
37-year guerilla famine sweeps Zimbabwe after 24 years of emergency as FARC detonates
war in Angola Indonesian rule bomb before inauguration
 Altapress Newspaper Russia
ATV Banja Luka Television Bosnia and Herzegovina
Beta Press News agency FR Yugoslavia
Chelyabinski Rabochiy Newspaper Russia
Express Newspaper Ukraine
Feral Tribune Magazine Croatia
Inform Polis Newspaper Russia
KBR68H Radio Network Indonesia
Magyarnarancs Magazine Hungary
Malaysiakini Online publication Malaysia
Molodoy Bukovinets Newspaper Ukraine
Noseweek Magazine South Africa
Premier Newspaper Russia
Radio Hai Radio Armenia
Radio Premier Radio Russia
Reporter Magazine Bosnia and Herzegovina

$26,568,362
Chechen rebels seize Hamid Karzai 587 million Bali nightclub Friendster sets up
Moscow theatre and installed as interim Internet users bombing leaves first online social
hold 800 hostage – Afghan leader 202 people dead network
174 killed as Russian Total financing provided
forces end siege
 32
2003

MySpace.com US and coalition Liberian president Serbian prime Above: World Health Armenian president Violent protests
launches forces invade Iraq Charles Taylor seeks minister Zoran Organization warns Robert Kocharian over gas exports
exile in Nigeria, ending Djindjic assassinated of possible SARS wins second term force President
14 years of civil war in Belgrade pandemic amid accusations of Sanchez de Lozada
fraud of Bolivia to resign

Mikhail Khodorkovsky
– the wealthiest man
in Russia and sixteenth
wealthiest in the world –
arrested and accused of fraud
ATV Stavropol Television Russia
B92 Television, Radio, Online Serbia And Montenegro
Borisoglebsk TV Television Russia
CORNET Radio network Sierra Leone
El PeriÓdico Newspaper Guatemala
Feral Tribune Magazine Croatia
Ideele Magazine, Radio network Peru
Krestyanin Newspaper Russia
Mail & Guardian Newspaper South africa
Malaysiakini Online publication Malaysia
Molodoy Bukovinets Newspaper Ukraine
Noseweek Magazine South Africa
Rustavi 2 Television Georgia
$34,728,730
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Rose Revolution Above: Oscar Berger wins President Vladimir
becomes prime minister sweeps Georgian Guatemalan presidential Putin gains almost total
of Malaysia as Mahathir president Eduard election, causing control over parliament
bin Mohamad steps Shevardnadze predecessor Alfonso after United Russia Total financing provided
down after 22 years from power Portillo to flee to Mexico Party wins landslide
 34
How will we fund the Fourth Estate?
The advertising-based model of financing the press is collapsing. Classifieds have
already dried up, while brand advertisers are defecting to the Internet in search of
instant, targeted, measurable access to consumers.
Advertising is abandoning old media. For the first time since the advent
of mass media, in the middle of the nineteenth century, advertisers can
do without the news media to introduce their products to consumers.
It’s not that they have suddenly stopped putting their advertisments
there, but “news” is now only one medium amongst others – and not
always the best – in a universe where digital technology and the
Internet have increased the ways of reaching the public.
Of course, advertising has been using channels other than news-
papers for a very long time. And, also for a long time, the “news”
on radio and television has accounted for a decreasing part of the
programming. But the illusion persisted: the “information” aspect
of broadcasters continued to define radio stations and TV channels,
even if most of the programming was entertainment. But for most
of the new vehicles that are appearing on the Internet, providing
information is no longer necessary.
Essay
An American study highlighted that “the crisis in journalism has less
to do with where people get information than how to pay for it ...
It may not strictly be loss of audience. It may, more fundamentally,
be the decoupling of news and advertising” (The State of News Media
2008). It shows clearly that the people in charge of the news media
are faced with the challenge of having to reinvent themselves and find
a new business model while reducing the cost of producing the infor-
mation. “It’s like needing to change the engine oil whilst driving on
the motorway,” said Howard Weaver, editor at McClatchy Company.
Such drastic destabilization has been happening throughout the past
decade. Day after day, information is further reduced as a loss leader,
an end-of-the-aisle display on the Internet, on TV, and radio. And
because daily newspapers are expensive to make and give work to
more journalists than other media, they have become the most vulner-
able. And yet the size and competence of their editorial team is their
main comparative advantage. There lies the key: traditional news
media are put in danger of death by the multiplication of new media,
most of which are producers and broadcasters of entertainment and
services, search engines such as Google, or social networks. “The
multiplication of media has made the advertisers’ strategy more and
more complex,” wrote media consultant Pascal Josèphe, “and even if
media leaders can still assert their power, advertising investments are
divided up.” ( La société immédiate, Calmann-Lévy, 2008, p. 85.)
Advertisers doubt the effectiveness of advertising in mainstream
media (general newspapers, radio stations, and TV channels)
because, in spite of documented research by specialist bodies, they
no longer really know who their ads reach (housewives under fifty,
socio-professional categories, etc.). The old joke in the advertising
world is no longer funny. Advertisers are tired of “knowing that
half their budget is wasted and of not knowing which half.” They
want to be able to identify their targets better, which is what digital
technology promises to do, and even to know exactly who sees the
ad and who wants to buy and will buy the product.
Otherwise, they fear that they will just be throwing their money
away. This kind of reluctance is, of course, stronger in times of
economic difficulties. The purpose of advertisers is not to finance
the press and information. It is not their job, and newspapers, radio
stations, and television channels are nothing to them other than
“media” whose “content” is not necessarily “news.” The migration
of advertising budgets seems unstoppable. The whole economic
model of news media is destabilized. Newspapers were the first hit,
but now the whole information chain is under threat.
Fantastic growth
In 1995, there were only 23,500 websites; in July 2007, the UK
company Netcraft counted more than 125 million. Never before
has a technology spread so fast and so massively. And it won’t
stop there. 2008 saw the emergence of a new advertising market
destined to grow fast: mobile telephony. A huge competition was
launched between the network giants and all the players on the
digital chain, fighting for new mobile subscribers and consumers
of the products that will be on offer. In fact, it has already started.
“Telecom operators,” Orange CEO Didier Lobmbard argues, “can no
longer withdraw into themselves and confine themselves to selling
pipes but must become true public amplifiers and reap corresponding
advertising revenue ... Whereas up until now the race for advertising
revenue was the preserve of the traditional Internet services players
(such as Google and Yahoo!), operators can now occupy these new
territories.” (Pascal Josèphe. La société immédiate, Calmann-Lévy,
2008, p. 85.) Not reassuring for the press.
Didier Lombard explains very clearly that a battle for value has been
launched throughout the media’s production chain, in the widest
sense of the word “media.” From OEMs, networks, access providers,
services providers, and search engines through to content designers.
The same competition has started looking at the design and manage-
ment of advertising, and Google’s attacks on that front show that the
battle will be merciless. Each wants to capture the public, the paying
customers, and the advertising on the way. That is why there is a shift
toward large groupings and a general move toward convergence.
All new websites are not yet viable, and some never will be, but
it only took for them to deflect 10% to 15% of the budgets of the
traditional press to plunge it into an unprecedented crisis. The video
games explosion and that of “social” sites could potentially consume
further big slices of the advertising pie. Advertising investments are
not endless, and the market shares that are deflected toward new
electronic media are usually lost forever.
Advertising is migrating to the Internet
Online advertising should see a growth of more than 20% over the
next year. Only a minute part of these budgets will be picked up by
newspaper websites. None of the traditional media can escape this
earthquake. Indeed, TV remains – but for how long? – the last big
mass media, the one which still gathers the whole family, or a good
part of it, in the front room. It is indispensible to the big advertisers
when they want to launch mass consumer products or new global
brands. But advertising professionals believe that the rise in price of
TV ads, when the large general channels’ viewing figures are falling,
is excessive. In the US, the viewing figures for the big TV networks
have dropped by 2% per year over the last ten years, whereas the
American population grew by 30 million people.
“We are seeing an inevitable and slow collapse of the whole mass
media market,” J.-D. Lasica, Chairman of Social Media Group, said,
while Jim Stengel, Head of Marketing at Procter and Gamble, a
giant advertiser with a $5.5 billion budget, assured the American
Association of Advertising Agencies that the current advertising
model was “broken.”
Toward the fully digital
Meteoric technological advances speed up and increase the effects
of these upheavals. “It’s only a matter of time before all advertising
 36
becomes digital,” Dominique Delport, CEO of Havas Média
explained. “It will be possible to react very quickly and place ads ‘on
demand.’” If the big networks, such as CBS in the US or TF1 in
France, fall victim to the fragmentation of the viewing public, “old”
media, like cinema, will get a second youth by benefitting from
digitization. Thanks to digitization, advertising films can already be
made almost instantly. Until now, they were shot long before being
played in cinemas and did not change, come what may.
Social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, and
Second Life, are or are going to be, for the most part, a new
advertising El Dorado, thanks to their ability to gather a public that
is both loyal and often connected 24/7. They provide a lot of data
on their users, who, furthermore, form sub-groups with common
interests. They could help target ads with more accuracy. It’s in
order not to be out of its depth in the digital world that Publicis
acquired Digitas, a digital specialist agency, for $1.3 billion. With
this acquisition, Publicis aims to make – by subcontracting to
low-cost countries – thousands of versions of the same ad. Then,
with computer algorithms, its clients will be able to target each
consumer with a matching ad, at the most effective time.
That will be the end of ads with an unknown real impact. For
advertisers and agencies, the Internet and digitization also open up
a new era with performance-related billing: ads will no longer be
launched blindly and we will know – we already know – immediately
if they are effective. Prices are proportional to the number of clicks
registered on the ad and possibly to the subsequent purchases.
“It’s by spending more and more time on the Internet that consumers
build their purchasing decisions. Therefore, that is where advertisers
Essay
must be, and we help them target their customers at the best time,”
David Kenny, head of Digitas USA, explained to more than four
hundred representatives of the world’s leading newspapers,
gathered in Amsterdam in October 2007. Straight after him, Steve
Seraita, Vice-Chairman of the large US firm Scarborough Research,
hammered the nail in: “The printed press,” he said, “will soon no
longer be the basic medium for an advertising campaign.”
A high risk shift
In the face of the digital flood and this massive advertising shift, it’s
as if numerous newspaper publishers and media group leaders have
been experiencing a fit of panic. They were first unsettled by the
near disappearance of the gold mine that was classified advertising,
from job ads to housing ads and car ads: only ten years ago,
classified ads still accounted for 76% of the advertising revenue of
daily papers. Today, they have melted like snow in the sun. In France,
the drop in classified ads turnover has been 20% per year since
2004. Soon, people won’t buy a newspaper to find a job, much less
to find a flat or a used car.
Faced with the erosion of their balance sheets, publishers have often
rushed to the Internet like they would a magic potion. In reality, they
don’t yet know what the true effects or the economic effectiveness
will be. To this day, most newspaper sites don’t generate enough
revenue to survive and less so to develop quality information.
Newspaper websites are very far from making as much money as their
print parent companies, and their advertising rates are much lower.
What takes place is an unequal swap: euros for cents. At Le Figaro,
for example, classified ads on the website are sold at a rate seven
times lower than was charged by the printed paper. “Even if you
double or triple this revenue, it won’t be enough,” the head of one
large group acknowledged. Aware that they don’t measure up to
the new Net giants, some are grouping. In the US, four large press
groups (Tribune Co., Gannett, Hearst, and the New York Times
Group) have united around a joint offering to advertisers. With
QuadrantOne, advertisers can buy space on the websites of 170
local media, which represents 50 million single visitors per month.
This initiative is not insignificant, but it has not yet born much fruit
since advertising on newspaper websites is still progressing more
slowly than on all other sites. And it comes very late. Had French
newspapers been capable at the end of the nineties to group their
classified ads offering, they wouldn’t have been “stripped” by the
newcomers, “pure players” on the Internet. However, in the digital
world, lost places cannot be regained.
Press bosses are taking the full measure of the situation: they have
entered, for a few years, a most perilous shift period. “Think of
Yugoslavia,” Bob Garfield, one of the best American advertising and
marketing analysts, wrote. “Milosevic was overthrown, democracy
was reinstated but, five years later, unemployment in Serbia was 32 %,
the Prime Minister was assassinated and war criminals were still on
the run … There is no way to make the transition into anything that is
different, or new or whatever without chaos. Likewise in the transition
from old media to new. The new paradigm will not be established
overnight.” (“Chaos Theory 2.0,” Advertising Age, 4 April 2007.)
In 2008, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that with the collapse of their
classified ads market, newspapers had entered “a world of aches
and pains” and that their future looked “particularly gloomy” to him.
Forty-eight hours later, it was announced that the Los Angeles Times
was laying off 150 journalists – 17% of its editorial team.
Bernard Poulet
Editor-in-Chief, L’Expansion
Chair of MDLF Board of Directors
 38
2004

Orange Revolution Mikhail Saakashvili UN acknowledges pro- “Podcasting” coined Former general Susilo Above: At least 334 Ten new countries
in Ukraine ushers in wins landslide government “Janjaweed” as term for Internet Bambang Yudhoyono hostages, mainly children, join European Union
Viktor Yushchenko victory in Georgian militias in Sudan delivery of radio- wins second round of die as Russian special
as president presidential election responsible for mass style content presidential elections in forces end Beslan school
killings in Darfur Indonesia hostage crisis
 Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN) Online Israel
ATV Banja Luka Television Bosnia and Herzegovina
B92 Television, Radio, Online Serbia and Montenegro
Beta Press News agency Serbia and Montenegro
Cambio Magazine Colombia
Chelyabinski Rabochyi Newspaper Russia
El PeriÓdico Newspaper Guatemala
Inform Polis Newspaper Russia
Krestyanin Newspaper Russia
Mail & Guardian Newspaper South Africa
Melitopolskie Vedomosti Newspaper Ukraine
Moi Rayon Newspaper Russia
OK Radio Radio Serbia and Montenegro
Onogost Magazine Serbia and Montenegro
Rustavi 2 Television Georgia
The Post Newspaper Zambia
Tomsk Press Newspaper Russia

$43,669,404
UN ends monitoring Malaysian opposition Asian tsunami kills more “Oilgate” scandal Yasser Arafat, Facebook
of peace process in leader Anwar bin Ibrahim than 160,000 in Indonesia in South Africa after president of launches
Guatemala, despite freed from jail after and tens of thousands ANC siphons off Palestinian National
widespread crime and court overturns sodomy more across continent state oil money Authority, dies Total financing provided
human rights violations conviction
 40
2005

1 billion Mahmoud Kyoto Protocol on the MDLF launches King Gyanendra South African president Hundreds of thousands
Internet users Ahmadinejad environment comes Free Press of Nepal dismisses Thabo Mbeki sacks deputy left homeless as
elected president into force without US Investment government and Jacob Zuma following Zimbabwe government
of Iran participation Notes in US imposes martial law corruption scandal destroys slum housing
 Altapress Newspaper Russia
ATV Banja Luka Television Bosnia and Herzegovina
Borisoglebsk TV Television Russia
El Faro Online publication El Salvador
El PeriÓdico Newspaper Guatemala
Grivna Newspaper Ukraine
Krestyanin Newspaper Russia
Mail & Guardian Newspaper South Africa
Moi Rayon Newspaper Russia
Onogost Magazine Serbia and Montenegro
TV2 Tomsk Television Russia
Yakutsk Vecherny Newspaper Russia

$50,402,923
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf YouTube launched Socialist leader Evo Morales 250,000 people Indonesia signs
becomes president of wins presidential election, demonstrate for peace deal with
Liberia, Africa’s first becoming first indigenous democracy in Hong Kong Aceh separatists
female head of state Bolivian to take office Total financing provided
 42
2006

King Gyanendra reinstates MDLF launches Mass demonstrations Russian journalist Chinese government Montenegro Hamas wins elections to Slobodan Milosevic
democracy after 500,000 Voncert on Zurich and Danish embassies Anna Politkovskaya builds firewall to declares Palestinian parliament – found dead in cell
people demonstrate in Stock Exchange attacked following murdered censor Internet content independence Israel, US and EU refuse in The Hague
Kathmandu and publishes first publication of cartoons to recognize new
Impact Dashboard of Prophet Mohammed government
 Altapress Newspaper Russia
ANRI Publishers association Russia
ATV Banja Luka Television Bosnia and Herzegovina
ATV Stavropol Television Russia
B92 Television, Radio, Online Serbia and Montenegro
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN)
Online Bosnia and Herzegovina
Beta Press News agency Serbia
Borisoglebsk TV Television Russia
Chelyabinski Rabochyi Newspaper Russia
El PeriÓdico Newspaper Guatemala
Express Newspaper Ukraine
Inform Polis Newspaper Russia
KBR68H Radio network Indonesia
Krestyanin Newspaper Russia
Le Quotidien Newspaper Senegal
Mail & Guardian Newspaper South Africa
Melitopolskie Vedomosti Newspaper Ukraine
Molodoy Bukovinets Newspaper Ukraine
Parma novosti Newspaper Russia
Radio 021 Radio Serbia and Montenegro
Radio Premier Radio Russia
RTV21 Radio, Television Serbia and Montenegro

$61,409,057
Twitter Violence erupts as Fidel Castro Gas Wars begin General Augusto Ukrainian president Viktor Joseph Kabila wins
launched thousands demand temporarily between Russia Pinochet dies after Yushchenko accepts rival first elections in DRC
resignation of Hungarian transfers duties as and Ukraine being formally charged Viktor Yanukovych as for four decades
prime minister Ferenc president of Cuba in Chilean courts for prime minister to avoid Total financing provided
Gyurcsany to brother Raul human rights violations new elections
 44
Is the Internet a threat to journalism?
With the advent of the Internet, journalism as we’ve known it for over a century
is long gone. But the role of journalist – in recording events, in building opinions,
in presenting facts – is here to stay.
In times of great change, there’s bound to be some confusion.
So it’s not surprising that journalists are still trying to make
sense of the Internet revolution that threatens to smother us.
But in reality, it’s media companies that are under threat, not so
much journalism. Indeed, profit margins are being squeezed, and
advertisers are migrating online. In addition, the media landscape
is being irreversibly altered by the growing fragmentation of
information. To top this, those who were once spectators have
now invaded the pitch and are demanding to join in the game
too – giving rise to the new phenomenon of “citizen journalism.”
To survive, some old media will have to merge. Some will bite the
dust. But old media will not disappear completely – newspapers,
in one form or another, will remain, just like their old media
cousins, television and radio.
Content is not king
Content is king, so they say. They’re wrong. Content is NOT king.
Essay
Technology is. Content providers – newspapers, television, and
radio stations – are facing problems everywhere. It’s technology
and telecommunications companies that are reaping the rewards
of the Internet. For the first time last year, advertisers in the
United Kingdom spent more online than on newspapers. In the
US, online advertising has already outstripped that of radio.
Worse still, competitors for the advertising dollar include those
which are not strictly content providers – YouTube, MySpace, and
Flickr, to name a few. In other words, advertisers no longer rely
on journalism to deliver eyeballs the way they once did with old
media. Indeed, none of the top four online companies – Google,
Yahoo, MSN, and AOL – are media companies. They and forty-five
others control over ninety-five percent of the online advertising
market. Anyone outside this elite group faces intense competition
for a relatively small pot of money.
Free or pay model?
True, old media have joined the race to claim a piece of the
cyberturf, but their online income has so far failed to make up
for the sharp decline in their traditional operations. Malaysiakini
(MalaysiaNow), when it was launched ten years ago, very
quickly came to the realization that a free model is financially
unsustainable. Indeed, news organizations are shooting
themselves in the foot by offering their content for free. Eight
years ago, Malaysiakini migrated to a subscription-based model,
requiring our readers to pay a subscription of $6 per month.
It was a painful process, as we saw our readership drop like a ton
of bricks. But we persevered, and over the years, we are able to
convince more and more readers to pay and eventually make a
profit. Not surprisingly, other media organizations are thinking
of adopting the pay model. The New York Times website will be
implementing it from next year. Rupert Murdoch, whose Wall
Street Journal online already charges for content, will introduce
subscriptions for the other newspapers in his News Corp stable.
Party ends for old media
Clearly, the party has come to an end for old media. Stocks of
these companies are in a free-fall. To satisfy Wall Street, media
companies are cutting costs. Journalism suffers as a result.
Technology has given us more power over how we consume
information, and media organizations have been trying hard –
often unsuccessfully – to understand this new role. In cyberspace,
everyone can have a voice. Power has shifted to the consumers
of information, who are increasingly content creators as well.
At the same time, however, there’s a tendency for news and views
to degenerate into noise. The proliferation of new media does
not necessarily give us better choices. More choices, yes, but not
better choices. The vast majority of unsolicited opinion on the
Web is banal, uninteresting, and often offensive. In the end, it’s
our search for quality that will separate the wheat from the chaff.
Which brings us to another issue: like it or not, media companies
no longer have a monopoly on the truth. Media is anything people
want to read, watch, or listen to – whatever the source, whether
amateurs or professionals. And they want it at their fingertips
through devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, and laptops.
Now that’s a pretty scary thought for journalists.
Everyone can be a journalist?
More troubling, however, is the idea that everyone can be a
journalist. There’s no doubt that bloggers have played a very
important role in improving journalism. They help check bad
journalism. They pinpoint mistakes and inaccuracies. They provide
alternative viewpoints. But bloggers will have to live up to the
very standards they demand from journalists – in getting the facts
right, in exercising similar discipline in the verification process,
in not peddling hearsay as news. Dan Gillmor, author of We,
the Media and widely considered the father of citizen journalism,
is well aware of this. In a debate I had with him at a media
event a few years ago, he conceded that there is just as much
irresponsible blogging as there is bad journalism. Correction.
Perhaps more. Gillmor is today dedicating much of his effort to
help improve the standards in the blogosphere.
Bad blood
Yes, there has been a lot of bad blood between bloggers and
journalists. But it’s time to put an end to this war. Do we want to
live in a world where there are only bloggers and no journalists?
Surely not. After all, everyone has an opinion, and many do-it-
yourself journalists can do it much better than the so-called lords of
the profession. Yet most independent accounts of local and global
events have come from professional journalists. It is imperative that
this continues. On the other hand, would we want to live in a world
populated by only journalists and no bloggers? Definitely not.
It is for this reason that Malaysiakini is launching a program to
train a team of citizen journalists who can help us cover news.
Since we kicked off that project a year ago, we have trained over
100 citizen journalists – all of whom are equipped with not just
basic reporting skills but also an appreciation for journalistic ethics.
There is no doubt that the Internet is a threat to journalism.
Moreover, it is open to massive state censorship and disinformation
on a scale previously unknown. Yet authoritarian regimes, while
seeking to maintain control over the Internet’s political impact, are
at the same time eager to exploit its technological benefits. That’s
the dilemma which civil society and independent media must exploit.
The Internet is not going to go away. We all have to learn to
embrace it.
STEVEN GAN
Editor-in-Chief, Malaysiakini
 46
2007

Bulgaria and Three Salvadoran members of
Romania join Central American Parliament
the EU assassinated in Guatemala with
help of local police
British court rules that Apple unveils Above: Pakistani president Fighting between
former Zambian president iPhone Pervez Musharraf Hamas and Fatah
Frederick Chiluba suspends Chief Justice, divides Palestinian
conspired to rob Zambia leading to widespread Authority
of $46 million demonstrations
 ATV Banja Luka Television Bosnia and Herzegovina
ATV Stavropol Television Russia
Borisoglebsk TV Television Russia
Chelyabinski Rabochyi Newspaper Russia
Green Wave Radio Georgia
Grivna Newspaper Ukraine
Kafa Newspaper Ukraine
Kendari TV Television Indonesia
Los Tiempos Newspaper Bolivia
Mail & Guardian Newspaper South Africa
Molodoy Bukovinets Newspaper Ukraine
Pancevac Press Newspaper Serbia
PPMN Media support foundation Indonesia
Radio Boom 93 Radio Serbia
TV2 Tomsk Television Russia
Ujyaalo 90 Network Radio network Nepal
Vijesti Newspaper Montenegro

$72,127,869
Hundreds of Burmese military State of emergency Above: Ethnic Former Pakistani Above: Landslide election
thousands protest violently suppresses declared in Georgia political conflict prime minister victory by Bangladesh
in Bogota against “Saffron Revolution” as riot police battle explodes in Kenya Benazir Bhutto Awami League alliance
kidnappings and protesters demanding following failure of assassinated restores democratic Total financing provided
conflict in Colombia president’s resignation presidential elections government
   48
2008

Global Ugandan government 1.5 billion South African president MDC claims outright Former Bosnian Dmitry Medvedev wins Above: Fidel Castro
financial and LRA sign permanent Internet users Thabo Mbeki resigns over victory in Zimbabwean Serb leader Radovan presidential elections formally resigns as
crisis strikes ceasefire but rebel allegations of interfering elections and boycotts Karadzic arrested in in Russia, while president of Cuba
leader Joseph Kony fails in corruption case against run-off Serbia Vladimir Putin becomes
to attend Jacob Zuma prime minister
 Akzia Newspaper Russia
Altapress Newspaper Russia
ANRI Publishers association Russia
ATV Banja Luka Television Bosnia and Herzegovina
Batumelebi Newspaper Georgia
Beta Press News agency Serbia
Borisoglebsk TV Television Russia
Global Voices Online Global
Grivna Newspaper Ukraine
Kachkanarsky Chetverg Newspaper Russia
KBR68H Radio network Indonesia
Krestyanin Newspaper Russia
Lesotho Times Newspaper Lesotho
Mail & Guardian Newspaper South Africa
Melitopolskie Vedomosti Newspaper Ukraine
Molodoy Bukovinets Newspaper Ukraine
TV2 Tomsk Television Russia
TV Vijesti Television Montenegro
Vijesti Newspaper Montenegro
Yakutsk Vecherny Newspaper Russia

$84,475,005
Bolivian president Above: Pervez Tensions between Russia Kosovo declares Above: Thai news 86 alleged coup plotters
Evo Morales gains Musharraf steps and Georgia escalate independence from outlets silenced, but appear in court in
67% of vote in recall down as president of into full-blown military Serbia citizen journalists Turkey’s Ergenekon trial
referendum on his Pakistan conflict over South report on protests Total financing provided
leadership Ossetia and political violence
 50
2009

Barack US newspaper Time Warner South African Former journalist Carlos Morgan Tsvangirai Sri Lankan Copenhagen Climate
Obama industry collapses, spins off AOL prosecutors drop Mauricio Funes Cartagena sworn in as prime journalist Lasantha Summit fails to
sworn in as with widespread corruption case against elected president of El minister of Zimbabwe’s Wickramatunga produce binding
US president bankruptcies and mass Jacob Zuma, who is Salvador, ending two power-sharing murdered, leaving article agreement on reducing
layoffs of journalists elected president decades of ARENA party rule government predicting own death carbon emissions

Mass protests erupt across
Iran in response to disputed
re-election of President
Ahmadinejad
Altapress Newspaper Russia
B92 Television, Radio, Online Serbia
Beta Press News agency Serbia
Ebart Media archive Serbia
Global Voices Online Global
Mail & Guardian Newspaper South Africa
Melitopolskie Vedomosti Newspaper Ukraine
NewsDay Newspaper Zimbabwe
OK Radio Radio Serbia
Pancevac Press Newspaper Serbia
TV2 Tomsk Television Russia
TV Vijesti Television Montenegro
Vijesti Newspaper Montenegro
VJ Movement Online Global
$94,772,002
Above: New Bolivian Guatemalan Former Peruvian president Above: Abdullah Ahmad At least 30
constitution gives government Alberto Fujimori convicted Badawi steps down as journalists among
greater rights to destabilized of human rights violations Malaysian prime minister 57 murdered in
indigenous majority by video of and sentenced to 25 years and is replaced by deputy, ambush in southern Total financing provided
murdered lawyer in prison Najib Abdul Razak Philippines
 52

2010

Viktor Yanukovych Google shuts Chinese Massive earthquake leaves Iraq holds second Apple announces
First Quarter of

elected president of site following attack more than 220,000 dead and parliamentary release of iPad
Ukraine on e-mail accounts of 1 million homeless in Haiti elections since
human rights activists ousting of Saddam
Hussein
 Altapress Newspaper Russia
KBR68H Radio network Indonesia
TV Vijesti Television Montenegro
Pancevac Press Newspaper Serbia
Ujyaalo 90 Network Radio network Nepal
VJ Movement Online Global

$97,144,220
Dozens of military Plane crash over Russia Former Guatemalan
officers arrested over kills Polish president Lech president Alfonso Portillo
alleged “sledgehammer” Kaczynski and 95 others, arrested and extradited to
plot to overthrow including dozens of senior US on money-laundering Total financing provided
Turkish government military and political leaders charges
 54
Center Advanced Media Prague
CAMP: Find a way or make one
It was 1998, a time when new media were truly new, the dot-com
bubble was still bubbling, and the news-media industry was just starting
to figure out what to do with the “information super-highway” and
other jargon of the era. Millions were being burned on half-baked
ideas and money was being made on concocting ways in which new
technologies could be put to use in publishing and broadcasting.
That year, MDLF created the Center for Advanced Media − Prague
(CAMP) as its new-media arm, based on the idea that independent
journalism, which rarely has millions to spend on expensive technology
projects, could greatly benefit from the revolution that was truly hap-
pening underneath the multilayered hype.
Its goal was to create cost-effective solutions that used new
technologies in a way that levelled the playing field for independent
media. In other words, to find a way or make one.
The original idea was to use cheap commercially available hardware
and software, sometimes with groundbreaking initial results (such
as in the case of Indonesia’s KBR68H radio network). But we soon
found out that even these had their limits.
for
A good example is online payments. The Phnom Penh Post contacted
us about the difficulties they were having in selling subscriptions
to their magazine online. At the time, it was nearly impossible for
companies outside of the US and Western Europe to accept credit card
transactions. So we hired programmers and created the Digital Kiosk
transactions service (http://digitalkiosk.mdlf.org) to handle credit
card processing. Between May 1999 and February 2010, the service
processed $505,143 of revenue on behalf of some twenty media
organizations in developing democracies – revenue they probably
would not have had otherwise.
Campware open source tools for online media
As CAMP ventured into ever more complex projects, we began to real-
ize that there were very few commercial solutions that catered to the
needs of non-Western media. Many of the needs involved language
support and localization, and narrow-minded technology companies
considered their markets uninteresting and therefore did not develop
proper support – as anyone who has had to use Cyrillic or right-to-left
text can attest.
We looked toward the budding open source movement, which was
interesting to us for a couple of reasons. Open source means that
the programming code is freely available and that anyone can both
use it and modify it free of charge, but when we looked for solutions
immediately applicable to news media, there just weren’t too many
out there.
In 1999, a highly regarded print magazine covering post-Communist
countries, Transitions, was ceasing publication on paper. But they
made a bold decision, one that at the time was considered by many
to be foolhardy. They wanted to go online-only, and came to us to
either find a way or make one. We examined what already existed
and couldn’t find a single commercial or open source solution that
would fit their needs. What they wanted was a simple and flexible
tool that would enable regular journalists to publish on the Web in any
language without relying on technical personnel.
Transitions Online (www.tol.org) launched in 1999, and the multilin-
gual system that we developed to power it, later renamed Campsite,
was released to the public as free and open source software in March
2001. Campsite had a number of technical innovations, including sup-
port for Unicode, easy translation of the software into any language,
and a journalist-friendly online text editor.
Coinciding with Campsite’s release, we launched the Campware Initia-
tive (www.campware.org) as an umbrella for all of CAMP’s software
development activities. The reasoning was simple: Whenever we made
a software solution as part of our technical support work, that solution
would also be made generally available at no cost. Modifications would
not only be tolerated but actively encouraged, because a key portion of
open source licenses requires that changes to the software be shared
with the original creator. In practice, this means that improvements
made for one newspaper can be shared with all of the software’s users.
Our guiding idea was that software developed and distributed under
the Campware initiative should be user-centric, i.e. built explicitly for
the end user. The logic of short learning curves and non-mystifying
interfaces, first embodied in Campsite, was carried over into all of its
subsequent products: the Cream customer relationship management
software for newspapers, the Campcaster radio automation solution,
and the Dream newspaper distribution management software.
The open source development model has enabled CAMP to leverage
a total of $650,000 of donor investment over ten years into software
source code that would cost more than $14 million to produce in a
commercial setting.*
Campware’s software is now in use by more than 100 news media
organizations worldwide, including Guatemala’s elPeriódico
(www.elperiodico.com.gt), the first Arabic independent online radio
station, Ammannet (www.ammannet.net), Latin America’s first online-
only newspaper, El Salvador’s El Faro (www.elfaro.net), Switzerland’s
groundbreaking community-generated national radio station
Openbroadcast (openbroadcast.ch), Croatia’s legendary Feral Tribune
(www.feral.hr), the award-winning Transitions Online (www.tol.org),
and European Radio for Belarus (www.euradio.fm).
Conceptual, technical, and financial support
Since its inception, CAMP has implemented or helped kick-start more
than 70 new media projects worldwide, from Peru to Bosnia, Nepal
to Belarus. Its groundbreaking projects have included Internet- and
satellite-based radio networks (Indonesia, Nepal, Armenia, Russia,
Angola, Peru, Jordan/Palestinian Autonomous Territory), sustainable
online publishing (Malaysia, South Africa, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and
Montenegro, Macedonia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Belarus), as well
as targeted Internet infrastructure investment (Serbia and Croatia).
From 2000 to 2007, CAMP was in charge of MDLF’s two new-media
grant pools totalling $1.25 million, rigorously selecting candidates
and providing tools and consulting for the projects, often beyond the
duration of the respective grant periods. Projects benefiting from this
program included print and broadcast media in eighteen countries.
Large-scale infrastructure projects
From 2003 to 2006, CAMP implemented a large-scale online publishing
project in the Balkans together with the Swedish Helsinki Committee
for Human Rights. The three-year Media On the Web project created
a model of a sustainable Web publishing platform for independent
media by providing centralized hosting, developing a standardized
set of open source Campware tools, and offering ongoing consulting
and support by CAMP’s local implementation team. The results of the
project were exceptional. More than forty local newspapers and radio
stations were given conceptually mature, high-quality websites based
on Campsite, often superior to their commercial or state-owned peers.
Experience gained in the Media On the Web project enabled CAMP
to start up a similar project in Belarus. The project, which has already
provided services to more than a dozen media organizations in the
country, was successfully transferred to our local partner in 2009.
Unlocking the next level
In recent years it became increasingly obvious that if CAMP and
Campware were to achieve a greater degree of visibility and
popularity, new organizational and financial models were necessary.
Now, twelve years after its founding, CAMP is getting ready for
independent operation.
Leveraging CAMP’s impressive track record, MDLF succeeded in
finding a strategic partner in late 2009 for spinning off CAMP and
the Campware initiative. A new Prague-based non-profit organization
will be set to carry on the CAMP and Campware legacy to a whole
new level.
* Source code value quoted is based on the COCOMO method estimates by ohloh.net
for Campsite, Campcaster, and Cream software code.
 56
The Central Highlands Representatives of MDLF,
of Papua are home to KBR68H, and PPMN, together
some of the most isolated with the Radio Gogali team
communities in the world in Central Sumba
Ending the isolation
indonesian radio
Central Sumba – an underdeveloped region in eastern Indonesia,
a two-hour flight from Jakarta – has a unique megalithic culture,
one to which water buffalo are central. There is virtually no ritual,
be it marriage, a ceremony for a new building, or, especially, a
funeral, that can be conducted without the slaughter of a water
buffalo. Because of their central role in Sumba’s deeply traditional
society, water buffalo are often the target of thieves. In this remote
area, animal rustling is a social ill that has plagued the population
for years. One night last year, residents of one village sensed that
thieves were on the prowl. Someone called Radio Gogali, the
area’s new community radio station, alerting it to the thieves.
Traditional customs and
beliefs are strong in the
mountains of Papua
The station responded quickly, broadcasting news of the suspected
location of the gang. Immediately people rushed out of their homes
and started to block off roads around the village. The gang was
captured. Animal rustling had been halted by the actions of a
community radio station.
Radio Gogali started broadcasting in February 2009. This
community radio station was set up by an association of members
of the local population, with the assistance of radio news agency
KBR68H and non-profit PPMN, and with funding from the Dutch
government, managed by MDLF. The initiative to establish the
A radio presenter at Radio Solar panels power the
Arisca in Calang, Aceh, station built in Paniai
an area devastated by the in Papua’s Central
December 2004 tsunami Highlands
station came from NGO activists who felt the need for local media
in their area. Prior to Radio Gogali, the people of Central Sumba
had no reliable information supply. Newspapers from Jakarta
arrived a week after publication, while television news could only
be enjoyed by the tiny minority who had not only electricity but
also a satellite dish. The existence of a radio station was a long-
awaited dream. ”Before, if we needed to deliver information we
had to rely on it being passed on from mouth to mouth. Now we
have Radio Gogali,” said the regent of Central Sumba. The station
now brings information, entertainment, and education to 70,000
people living in the area.
 Schoolgirls in Central The official opening Sixty per cent of Radio Pikon Ane:
Sumba enjoy a break of Radio Arisca in children in Central ending isolation in the
from class Calang, Aceh Sumba never finish mountains of Papua
primary school

Central Sumba is not alone: 150 regencies are recognized as
underdeveloped and lack any kind of local media. They are also
often short of basic services, such as electricity. As a result, in its
efforts to extend information access, KBR68H often has to consider
how to provide an alternative energy source. In Central Sumba, we
installed solar panels, as we did in Paniai in Papua. In Yahukimo,
also in Papua, we built a micro-hydro system.
The opportunity to build community radio stations opened up
after authoritarian rule ended in 1998. This reform era bought
with it freedom of opinion and expression along with media
freedom. In the pre-reform era, private radio stations were not
allowed to produce their own news programs. Instead, they had to
relay news produced by government radio. Today that requirement
is no more and the right to set up community radio is recognized.
As a result, the sector has seen very rapid development. Before
1998 there were only around 700 radio stations nationwide; today
there are more than 2,600. The need for radio in underdeveloped
parts of the country is considerable but has become even greater
due to decentralization, with parts of existing regencies breaking
away to become regencies in their own right, often without
sufficient resources.
Since 2003, KBR68H has helped to set up stations in these
locations, especially in the eastern provinces of Maluku, Papua,
and East Nusa Tenggara. So far, we have built nine stations there,
in addition to the dozens of stations we have helped to build or
rebuild in areas hit by natural disasters, such as Aceh post-tsunami
and Yogyakarta post-earthquake.
The building of radio stations in isolated locations is part of
KBR68H’s mission. We do this in the belief that the free flow of
information must also be equitable, extending to those living in
poverty in remote areas. Through adequate access to information
 Schoolchildren await Sumba has depended Farming is the A water buffalo is led Sumba is one of
the official opening on emergency aid primary occupation in for sacrifice as part the poorest islands
of Radio Gogali in to stave off famines in Central Sumba of the launch of Radio in the Indonesian
Central Sumba due to crop failures Gogali, Central Sumba Archipelago
indonesian radio

we believe that societies will be better able to resolve their
problems. This is highly important for Indonesian society, which is
in a transition to a more meaningful democracy and a social order
that is more open and dignified. It is not right that in an era of
technological development there remain parts of the country cut
off from information access.
To establish radio stations in underdeveloped locations, we rely
heavily on local initiators. It is they who at first need to be mentored,
to be empowered, so they can become capable of building and man-
aging a station over the long term. Finding those initiators is a vital
task. We have to be convinced that the local team shares our view
of media as a tool for public service, and not for other purposes.
After the core team is formed, we provide basic training on managing
a station, related to programming, technical aspects, and marketing.
This is done in the place where the station will be built in order to
maximize the number of people who can participate. Under certain
circumstances, we also invite the managers of these stations to
undertake internships at KBR68H. As well as developing the capacity
of the station’s personnel, KBR68H also facilitates the physical build-
ing of the station, sending technicians to supervise construction. The
building work itself is usually the least complex part of the process.
This often surprises the initiators and the local community, who tend
to regard the building and equipping of a radio station as being
something way beyond their reach.
In the early years of the program, we set up the stations as locally
owned private companies. But more recently we have opted instead
for the community model, with ownership and management in the
hands of members of the local society. This has proven a more ef-
fective way of attracting broad public participation in the station,
as demonstrated by the case of Radio Pikon Ane in Yahukimo, the
launch of which was attended by more than 5,000 people. Some of
 Photos courtesy of
PPMN, KBR68H, Tessa Piper, and MarNic

The crew of Radio A school that reopened Five thousand people

Wagadai in Paniai, after months of closure walked for hours and even
in the remote Central thanks to Radio Pikon days to attend the launch
Highlands of Papua Ane in Yahukimo, Papua of Radio Pikon Ane

them had walked for three days to witness the official opening of unusual role. Radio Gogali foiled water buffalo thieves; Radio Radio Binaya Masohi Maluku
their beloved station. Pikon Ane encouraged farmers to arrange a schedule for selling Radio Defnatar Tanimbar Islands Maluku
their crops at market, resulting in higher prices for their produce. Radio Gogali Central Sumba East Nusa Tenggara
Community radio is also more suited to isolated locations, where The local government also uses these stations to disseminate Radio Matoa Manokwari West Papua
the potential for generating advertising income is minimal. development messages. Radio Merbau Bintuni West Papua
Whatever type of ownership is chosen, we always emphasize the Radio Pikon Ane Yahukimo Papua
importance of long-term sustainability. KBR68H provides support to As members of the KBR68H network, these stations also become Radio Rana Buru Island Maluku
these stations for up to three years, after which they are financially a means of linking their listeners to the outside world – ending the Radio Tavlul Tual Maluku
fully self-reliant. In many places where we have helped to set up isolation of remote communities. Radio Wagadai Paniai Papua
radio stations, they are the only form of mass communication Santoso
available. It is not surprising, therefore, that they often play an Director, KBR68H
 60
people
In Memory of
Stuart C. Auerbach
1935–2003

Co-founder & first Chair of MDLF

 62

Thank you to all our investors and contributors who have made
the past fifteen years possible, including:
investors & Contributors

Bank Vontobel
Calvert Social Investment Foundation
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
Council of Europe
DOEN Foundation
Dreilinden gGmbH
Eurasia Foundation
Foundation for Democracy and Media
Alexej Fulmek
David Haas
International Media Support
J. M. Kaplan Fund
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Open Society Initiative for West Africa
Open Society Institute
Oxfam Novib
Swedish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
All our Free Press Investment Note and Voncert responsAbility Media Development investors
Board of Directors

Current members:
Bernard Poulet (Chair)
Ying Chan
Sheila Coronel
Annette Laborey
Gerald Nagler
Aryeh Neier
Alexander Papachristou
John Ryle
Saša Vučinić

Previous members:
Kenneth Anderson (Chair 1997–2009)
Stuart Auerbach (Chair 1996–1997)
Roberto Eisenmann
Konstanty Gebert
Jan Urban
64

Offices

MDLF New York

37 West 20th Street, Suite 801
New York, NY 10011, USA
Phone 1.212.807.1304
Fax 1.212.807.0540

MDLF Prague
Salvatorska 10
110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic
Phone 420.224.312.832
Fax 420.224.315.419

Warsaw satellite office

ul. Leczycka 4, Apt. #3
02 065 Warsaw, Poland
Phone 48.22.823.91.34
Fax 48.22.658.33.54

Moscow Liaison Office

(operated by MDLF Service Corp.)
28 Tsvetnoi bulvar, str. 1
Moscow 127051, Russia
Phone 7.503.730.5301
Fax 7.503.730.5302