Diversify. Simplify. Engage Young and Rural Audiences

Their plan revolves around simplifying and, at the same time, diversifying the formats their content is available, making it easier for their audience to follow their work. This is needed because research shows that young people and those living in rural areas get their news mostly from social media, in a video/audio format. They want to:

• Create short videos where their journalists explain the most important takeaways of their investigations and post these to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok;
• Follow up the impact of their stories in local communities with video stories;
• Continue their podcast production;
• Add a short summary with the key information at the beginning of their longer articles;
• Rethink and expand our newsletter, adding a personal touch (for example: an interesting takeaway) for each story.

Átlátszó Erdély (Transparent Transylvania/Transilvania Transparentă) an independent, nonprofit on-line newsroom in Romania doing investigative journalism in the public interest in the 1 million Hungarian minority community living in Transylvania. 

They encourage fact-based public debate, and challenge discriminatory societal norms. They work for an equitable, inclusive and collaborative society where political and economic decision-making is transparent, those in power are equally accountable, and those without power have a voice in the public discourse that has no taboos.

The project is published by an NGO (Asociația “Atlatszo Erdely Egyesulet”) founded in 2015 by the journalists working in our editorial team. Currently their team is made up of 6 people with an annual budget of about 140,000 EUR. Most of their content is published in Hungarian, and in addition, they translate the more important stories into Romanian and English.

Their editorial standards have been independently certified according to the Journalism Trust Initiative Programme.

Goals (expected) of the project

Social media (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) in their community is flooded with biased manipulative materials about issues of public interest. These are produced using public money either by political parties, or individuals/influencers paid by political parties.

Their well documented investigations – sometimes on the same issues – receive a relatively low number of visitors. It is difficult to compete for the attention of their readers with long, written articles, and social media algorithms are not making their lives easier, either.

The project focuses on creating ways of diversifying, simplifying and engaging their young and rural audiences, who get their information in a video format from social media.

They want to start “repackaging” their investigative work in the public interest in simple, video-based formats, with their journalists explaining the key takeaways. These materials would link back to their written investigations, giving the opportunity to those interested to read the entire article.

They want to follow up on the impact of their stories in local communities; double down on their podcast production; add a short summary with key information to our longer articles; rethink our newsletter.