Montenegro, MINA news agency: Raising awareness on the Roma and Egyptian community issues

min read

mina

The private news agency MINA focused its work on informing the public about the issues that the Roma and Egyptian (RE) community in Montenegro are facing.

By using the Engaged Citizens Reporting (ECR) tool, an online questionnaire that gives citizens opportunity to suggest topics, provide documents, and testimonials, and with the help of non-governmental organizations and RE activists, MINA News Agency identified the key problems that the communities are facing - access to education, health care and employment – and offered possible solutions.

The agency issued three callouts and produced 8 articles and 5 videos. Another important result is that all stories were featured in the mainstream media.

“The callouts and the articles reached 30000 people via web and 355000 people reached on social media networks,” said from the agency.

The first survey was related to RE community access to health services. The results showed that these communities should be priority groups for vaccination. The second callout was related to education and the results showed that what is needed is better organization of transportation to schools and involvement of RE mediators in the education process. The last survey was related to the employment issue the RE population is facing. The possible solution is seen in a literacy programme and involvement in vocational training to be equipped with skills in order to respond to labor market demands).

“With the introduction of the ECR tool, MINA has increased its capacity to deal with topics of social importance in addition to the usual agency reporting. This also affected the visibility of the agency in the public as a new source of information that is not intended only for the media,” said from the agency.

MINA News Agency, an ECR grantee, is the only news agency in Montenegro. It is privately owned and operates independently in line with the highest global editorial and reporting standards. The media outlet began providing services in 2001 based on the foundation set by the first news agency in Montenegro, Montena Fax, which was established in 1994. Since 2004 MINA has been financially self-sustainable and relies on paid subscriptions for the news service.

Media for All, a UK supported project, took particular care to include minority language media in the project or to address the issues that minorities are facing.

Journalift is an online resource platform with state-of-the-art hands-on practices and knowledge for people who want to know more about media development, media business and the newest trends in the media industry. It has been designed as a knowledge hub focused on the media outlets needs.
We see ourselves as ‘game changers’, in the media development community that bring new ideas, innovative tools and result-based approaches to media businesses operation.

Related articles:

Top stories from Journalift:

AI is, in many ways, a revolutionary event, similar to what Gutenberg’s printing press was in the 15th century, or radio, TV, and even internet in the 20th. It’s a technology that will permanently reshape society. For many of us, AI means everything we learned from multiple dystopian movies (2001 A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Matrix, Blade Runner, …).

Topics:

Latest Articles:

Navigating the Promise and Perils of AI: What Every Media Professional Needs to Know About ChatGPT
AI is, in many ways, a revolutionary event, similar to what Gutenberg’s printing press was in the 15th century, or
Disrupting the Market: How is one small media challenging the industry giant in Poland
Is it possible to create, in one year, a quality information service for a region with a population of 4.3
Calls Open for EU Investigative Journalism Award 2023
Journalists from the Western Balkans region and Türkiye are invited to submit their investigative stories The EU Award for Investigative