This project gives a platform to still largely neglected issues concerning the environment, including in the area of investigative journalism. This digital project will help “connect the dots” on these issues across communities. Donor: NED and The Open Society Institute

Objectives

This project aims to improve the quality and outreach of environmental investigative journalism and increase the impact of the environmental movement in Russia through enhancing the understanding and use of new technologies as public outreach tools.

Project Activities

One of the project activities will be creating an environment website with an experienced editorial team that is supported by students and outside contributors. This will be followed by the production of regular site content including features, investigations, news, and blog spots, so that the site becomes a valuable resource for environmental journalists and ordinary citizens. The project activities will also include holding a Prague-based environmental reporting workshop, translating BBC courses on understanding science and journalism into Russian, and providing onling traing using the BBC couses. There will be a new course created that will be tailor-made for Russian environmental reporting that will become part of TOL’s Russian course curriculum. This course will be created in cooperation with the U.S.-based Poynter Institute. There will also be three regional workshops to recruit and train both professional and citizen reporters as contributers. Environmental NGOs will also receive new media training to improve their outreach and impact. Project activites will also include TOL regularly produced content on Russia, including translations of environmental stories from the project site and other articles/multimedia. 

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Updates

In early October 2011, Transitions organized three workshops for Russian journalists, civil society activists, and citizen journalists on reporting environmental issues. The workshops in Novosibirsk, Moscow, and St. Petersburg were attended by 50 participants, who learned from, among others, Mark Schapiro, a leading U.S. writer on the environment and the author of Exposed: Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power. With his background in investigating environmental causes (he is senior correspondent at the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco), Mark provided perspectives rarely heard during typical environmental workshops. Expressing a common view, ECOM's Alexander Karpov, one of the participants, described the training as “a gasp of a fresh air” (ECOM, the St Petersburg Society of Naturalists, works to develop public participation in Russia and defend citizens’ environmental rights).

The workshops were held as part of “Giving Voice to Environmental Causes,” a project Transitions has been implementing since early 2011 that is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and the Open Society Institute. The project features training and networking opportunities for journalists and civil society activists in Russia as well as a website dedicated to reporting on the environment in Russia. The website, ecoreporter.ru, was launched in August with a view to building a community of professional as well as citizen journalists covering under-reported environmental issues throughout the country. According to the editor, Olga Zakharova, the website also offers an opportunity to professional journalists to publish on topics passed over by the federal or regional state media for political reasons.

Photos can be seen here.