It’s Your Money

26.04.2016

Projects

Period: November 1st – December 30th, 2015

With the project “It’s Your Money” Metamorphosis succeeded in creating capacity for production of current affairs video documentaries focused on investigative journalism about spending of taxpayers’ money in Macedonia. Within the short timeframe, it created, equipped and trained a correspondent network that produced, published and promoted six video-stories from six different regions.

Project activities included preparation and capacity building for the correspondent network from 6 regions in Macedonia, production of video stories, as well as their publishing and promotion.

The stories were first simultaneously published by the news agency Meta.mk in Macedonian, Albanian and English language, and by the news portal Portalb.mk in Albanian, and then they were webcasted and broadcasted in three languages through a network of collaborating media—22 web portals and two local TV stations—and through the social networks, directly reaching more than 190.000 viewers online and several hundred thousand more through local TVs. Within just one week, these six stories had significant and measurable impact at national level, but especially within their local communities of Skopje, Tetovo, Prilep, Bitola, Veles and Strumica region.

According to the feedback from the citizens and the journalists, this kind of stories, addressing the needs of the ordinary people, are filling a big gap within the Macedonian media landscape. As mainstream media are lacking current affairs programs, the video stories were welcomed by the broad audience as a refreshing return to the basics of professional journalism. The citizens highly appreciated journalists paying attention to their everyday needs, and ask for more. At local level the stories were used as basis for public demands for accountability and transparency. Municipal authorities in three of the targeted municipalities reacted immediately after the publishing of the stories, in case of Prilep by alleviating some of the problems, or through statements.