This project aims to increase the impact of targeted independent media institutions in Georgia, allowing them to play a greater role in the increasingly government-controlled media. Donor: NED, Transition Promotion Program of the Czech Foreign Ministry, and the Open Society Georgia Foundation

Objectives

 The overall objective of this one-year project is to increase the impact of a targeted group of independent media institutions, allowing them to play a greater role on the increasingly government-controlled media scene and as public watchdogs over Georgia's democratization. We take the example of netgazeti.ge, which received similar consulting as described in this project, as particularly inspiring: In only a short period of time, the site has become a respected leader among Georgia online media, suggesting that an overhaul of Internet strategy at four other independent media organizations can make an enormous impact on the national scene. More specifically, goals of the project are: to promote Internet-based media as an alternative to the poor quality and political bias of the traditional print and broadcast media; to increase the quality and usage of digital technologies in the Georgian media; to build the new media and multimedia skills of journalists, editors, and management; and to transfer best practices abroad to Georgia, adapted for local usage.

Project Activities

 We will provide intensive, ongoing, and individualized consultations and services to qualifying media organizations and journalism schools and increase the capacity of participating organizations to launch and sustain new media projects by exposing them to the most up-to-date Internet and mobile technology and techniques as practiced internationally. We will  demonstrate how underrepresented groups can use new media and mobile communications to create content that showcase the interests and opinions of their communities. We will also shephard sustainable new media projects from conception to completion, promoting the transfer of gained knowledge from the target group to others in Georgian society. Actvities will also include the training of key individuals at the participating organizations in new media and multimedia techniques both at in-country workshops and at the TOL new media/multimedia courses. We will also then create a highly competent local tech team that will be able to then provide similar consulting to media and civil society organizations with little or no international oversight.

For more information about TOL's other current projects, please click here.