NEUrologus Podcast- Tapping the EU's Nerve Center

Building on our Brussels-based newsroom’s credibility, the podcast will feature high-level English-language interviews, in-depth Hungarian expert commentary, and thought-provoking journalist discussions. With this new format, we aim to reach younger and broader audiences, filling a crucial gap in Hungary’s media landscape with smart, entertaining, and trustworthy EU coverage.

We would like to establish a novel podcast series covering EU topics, primarily targeted at a Hungarian audience. In recent years disinformation and outright government propaganda about the EU led to the erosion of trust in the EU, and confusion and misinformation being frequent about European topics and institutions. EUrologus remains the country's only independent newsroom operating directly from Brussels. While our online and print articles have consistently high readership, we would like to keep up with the changing trends of Hungarian media consumption and establish a podcast series speaking to our existing and new audiences. Currently, the country has a few popular political podcasts, and there is clearly demand for more, but none of them cover the EU extensively. EUrologus could establish a much more consistent and higher-quality series than the currently available audio options. Additionally, this format provides opportunities for our new generation of young expert journalists to revitalize some of our outputs and make them more attractive to younger audiences and those not actively engaged with traditional news formats.

Our project has three pillars: English language episodes (with Hungarian subtitles) allow us to bring in high-ranking experts and politicians from our wide Brussels network, to engage and challenge topics and narratives prevalent in Hungarian politics. Second, Hungarian language experts and political interviews bring in new perspectives directly from Hungarian-speaking resources and give people audio materials in their native tongue engaging, and setting the record right on salient political issues. Third, episodes with discussions of our Hungarian expert journalists about EU topics make it possible to reflect on topics in a less formal, more entertaining and thought-provoking way, bringing the EU closer to mainstream audiences.

Our podcast would be novel on the Hungarian market, providing a combination of regular content, high-level discussions and more entertaining topics and formats on the EU than any contemporary political podcast in the country. We believe Hungary is in dire need of a good EU-themed podcast series at the moment, and EUrologus is especially well-placed to do this.

Goals of the project

The essence of the project is to educate and report in an entertaining way about the EU institutions, and current legislation procedures in connection to the Hungarian government. Our correspondent office does not have a Podcast format yet, also we are sectioning three categories to address a wider range of audience:

1. Top-of-the-line figures: We invite English-speaking expert guests and MEPs from all member states in our network, to provide insight into political topics salient in Hungary from an international perspective. We connect experts and politicians to the Hungarian audience, and Europeans interested in Hungarian affairs.
2. Opening the Hungarian debate: Inviting Hungarian-speaking MEPs, officials and experts to give us insight into the EU approach compared to the Hungarian narrative. This output caters to Hungarian audiences with limited or incomplete information, who'd be interested in expanding their horizons, but prefer to listen to content in their native language.
3. Our expert journalists discuss and cover interesting, controversial and publically debated political topics in Hungarian. This type of episode is aimed to be more interesting, thought-provoking and less technical than other episodes, with the primary aim of sparking debates and introducing new arguments and perspectives about the EU in a dynamic manner.

We intend to extend EUrologus's audience to people who have a primary interest in EU politics, but the audio format would be more convenient and accessible for them. The main goal of our initiation is, to represent the European Union Institutions for our Hungarian audience, and to reframe the distorted narrative about the EU with authentic insights and fun facts.