S1 E1 Brave New Media: Steps to Independence with Daraj

09/07/22 • 31 min

Welcome to Brave New Media – a global podcast featuring journalists and editors from around the world telling their stories as we explore what can be done to ensure we have a healthier media ecosystem. In each episode, a specialist will dig deep into the issues uncovered by our Brave New Media outlets, and offer solutions.

In this episode, we meet Diana Moukalled, one of the founders of Daraj, meaning 'Steps' in Arabic. Her brainchild is a Beirut-based, Arabic-language digital platform, charting a new path through one of the world’s most polarised and censored media landscapes.

Diana Moukallad’s brainchild is the Beirut-based digital platform, Daraj, meaning steps in Arabic.

Diana describes her disillusionment with the heavily polarised media landscape in Lebanon and how she gave up her career as a high-profile TV journalist to create her own media start-up. Her struggle to acquire business skills and financing offers powerful insights into the challenges of attaining financial stability while remaining independent.

Responding to Diana’s story is Professor Naomi Sakr, former journalist and author of several authoritative works on media in the Arab world. She reflects on Diana’s story and offers ideas and strategies for how to build financial viability without compromising editorial integrity.

A transcript is available on the Brave New Media homepage or here: shorturl.at/lrtV0

More information on Daraj:

Daraj is a pan-Arab digital platform that was launched in 2017. It covers under-reported topics such as women and minority rights, the environment and climate change, corruption, and freedom of belief and expression. It publishes mainly in Arabic and translates some if its content to English.

Daraj is based in Beirut with a core team of 18 - 20 persons supported by a network of writers, journalists and partners, spread across the world. You can find them all listed on the website.

Daraj is able to generate approximately 25% of their revenue from subsidiary activities like their production arm and training, with the rest coming from international funders. With the funding they have at present, they produce 7-8 pieces of content a day but their ambition is to grow larger.

Daraj has an audience reach of 100,000 per month on its platforms and over 60% of them are females. The majority (45%) of its audience is under 34 and around 35% is between 35-54.

The largest number of its audience is based in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan with the rest distributed across the Middle East and in countries with large Arab diaspora (United States, Germany and United Arab Emirates).

https://daraj.com/

https://www.instagram.com/darajmedia/

https://www.facebook.com/darajmedia

https://twitter.com/Daraj_media

https://www.youtube.com/c/DarajMedia

Brave New Media is presented by Maha Taki and is A Holy Mountain Production, produced by Saskia Black, for BBC Media Action - the BBC's international charity. To contact us, email: [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Diana Moukallad’s brainchild is the Beirut-based digital platform, Daraj, meaning steps in Arabic.

A transcript is available on the Brave New Media homepage or here: shorturl.at/lrtV0

More information on Daraj:

Daraj is based in Beirut with a core team of 18 - 20 persons supported by a network of writers, journalists and partners, spread across the world. You can find them all listed on the website.

Daraj has an audience reach of 100,000 per month on its platforms and over 60% of them are females. The majority (45%) of its audience is under 34 and around 35% is between 35-54.

https://daraj.com/

https://www.instagram.com/darajmedia/

https://www.facebook.com/darajmedia

https://twitter.com/Daraj_media

https://www.youtube.com/c/DarajMedia

Brave New Media is presented by Maha Taki and is A Holy Mountain Production, produced by Saskia Black, for BBC Media Action - the BBC's international charity. To contact us, email: [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Introducing Brave New Media

Introducing Brave New Media – a global podcast featuring journalists from around the world telling their stories as we explore the information landscape and the future of independent media. We will dig deep into the issues with global media practitioners and experts, and what can be done to ensure we have a healthier media ecosystem.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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S1 E2 Brave New Media: On the Frontline in Ukraine

Welcome to episode two of Brave New Media – a global podcast featuring journalists and editors from around the world telling their stories as part of our mission to help create a healthier media ecosystem. In each episode a specialist digs deep into the issues uncovered by our Brave New Media outlets, and offers solutions.

In this episode we explore the stories of Katerina Sergatskova and Roman Stepanovych in Ukraine, they describe turning their culture and society digital platform Zaborona into a war-reporting operation, literally overnight.

Zaborona means taboo in Ukrainian, which is what Katerina Sergatskova set out to break when she founded this multi-media platform with her partner Roman amid the new freedoms that flourished after Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in 2014. But everything changed when the Russians invaded in February this year. Katerina and her partner Roman explain the lessons they had to learn quickly about how to cover war in their own country, how to become eyewitnesses and chroniclers of terrible events. Veteran BBC war correspondent Allan Little finds much in their stories that resonates with his own experiences, and he reflects on the need to expose myth-making in wartime, and on the virtue of bearing witness. But how do you stay motivated and committed when your mission to reveal injustice has no apparent effect?

A transcript is available on the Brave New Media homepage or here: shorturl.at/jwX14

Show Links:

https://zaborona.com/

https://www.facebook.com/zaborona

https://www.instagram.com/zaborona_com/

https://twitter.com/zaborona_media

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJrtV4HxObQ5j9DyNE_CiSg

More information on Zaborona:

Zaborona Media is an online publication covering social challenges, freedoms and security, championing those who stand up for basic rights and try to bring about positive change. Zaborona publishes reports, investigations, documentary video projects, comics and multimedia formats (podcasts and visual stories).

Zabarona has a team of over 30 people. Its funding model consists of contributions from readers on the online membership platform, Patreon, and grants from international organisations and partnerships.

It has an audience reach of around one million per month on its platforms, over 45 per cent of whom are female. Its largest audience is based in Ukraine (80 per cent), with 3 per cent in Russia and Poland, and less than 2 per cent in Austria, Germany and the US. The bulk of its listeners are in the 18-34 age group (40 per cent), closely followed by the 35-54 age group (39.5 per cent).

Zaborona recently became a laureate of the Free Media Awards from the Frittord Foundation and Di Zeit Foundation.

We asked Zabarona’s founders to describe their recent successes, and hopes and fears for the future.

Which of your recent stories are you most proud of and why?

Since the beginning of the invasion Zaborona focuses mostly on the coverage of war crimes and the human scale of the war. We report from the regions that are affected by the Russian aggression more than others; we speak to people who survive constant attacks. The most important story for us so far is the investigation of the attack on the Mariupol drama theater. The world still does not know how many people died in this bomb attack, and how many survived. We conducted interviews with dozens of people and you will hear more about that very soon.

Where do you hope to be in a year’s time? What do you need to get there?

Let’s hope that the war will be over soon and we will be able to focus on other things. For now, we as Ukrainian media are surviving, but we also have a lot to say to the world about our experience and expertise. We would like to show what it is like to live with the invasion, and what kind of world we would like to see afterwards.

What’s your greatest fear for the future of media in Ukraine?

Media in Ukraine are on the edge of their capacity. People are very tired of the war since it is a great stress, and we face great threats on a daily basis. So my fear is that many very good Ukrainain media will not survive, and many journalists will quit their jobs and even the profession. Society is already very traumatised, and it will worsen.

Brave New Media is presented by Maha Taki and ...