Strengthening the Communities of News Deserts in Slovakia Through Local Investigative Journalism

Communities in several regions of Slovakia are deprived of quality regional information. People are thus easily targeted by hoaxes and disinformation on social media, but it also means a lack of control of regional authorities.

Target group

The proposed project is oriented on communities and regions that are underserved by a lack of regional media providing high-quality information, especially in Central and Eastern Slovakia. According to the analysis of Transparency International Slovakia, almost 70% of Slovak regions have weak, insufficient or in the worst cases minimal coverage by the local newspapers. The majority of them are located in Central and Eastern Slovakia as the underserved regions in Western Slovakia benefit from the main media that have headquarters in the capital Bratislava.

In the most underserved regions in central and eastern Slovakia (white - minimal coverage, and light blue - insufficient coverage in the map) lives, according to the Slovak Statistical Office, around 900.000 people, will benefit of the project. We have to stress that underserved regions also correlate with the statistics of poverty (higher than average in underserved regions) and with large Roma minority populations, which itself has almost no coverage at all in all the media.

Goals of the project

ICJK is committed to training four journalists from newsrooms covering underserved regions in ICJK is committed to training four journalists from newsrooms covering underserved regions in Central and Eastern Slovakia in investigative journalism and techniques. That will allow them to work on investigative stories from underserved regions under the mentorship of ICJK journalists. Investigative stories resulting from the mentoring will be published in various formats - text, video, podcast, and social media posts. Trained journalists covering underserved regions will be the base of the newly established informal regional investigative network coordinated by ICJK and will collaborate on the follow-up investigative projects of the members of the network. In cooperation with the members of the network, a safe point for whistleblowers from the regions will be created. The project will help to increase the coverage of underserved regions and will increase the skills and capacity of local journalists to control municipalities and local governments and inform the public about matters of public interest.

Implemented activities 

• Selection and training in investigative journalism of 4 selected regional journalists covering deserted regions
• Mentoring and cooperation in preparation of the investigative stories from deserted regions
• Editing, fact-checking, publishing, and dissemination of outputs of the investigative stories
• The creation of a safe dropbox for tips from readers
• Establishment and operation of a regular newsletter of ICJK
• Creation of an informal network of journalists who will cooperate in investigations with ICJK

Impact addressing news deserts

The problem of the news deserts in Slovakia is widespread. There is just a limited number of real journalists and independent outlets covering all the regions not only the deserted ones. It is important to mention that the problem is hidden due to fact that in many regions municipalities own the media outlets which are biased and do not provide independent and objective information to the communities. The project helped deserted communities by uncovering certain problems that were not covered before, or were covered by independent media only in a limited way. Without the project and its outputs these topics would not have been covered. It is also important to mention that thaks to the project involved journalists and newsrooms started to orient more their attention to the deserted regions and also in cooperation with ICJK stories from these parts of Slovakia will be covered also in the future in cooperation with ICJK.