The New Era of Zasavje News

Slovenia's smallest and underdeveloped region, lacks adequate information services, and has elderly and poorly educated people. We aim to age 60+, by redesigning our web to make it more accessible and user-friendly. We'll add features for the visually impaired, making ZON.si more inclusive to the vulnerable. Also will develop a modern app applicable on all new and all old devices, targeting also to 15-30-year-old users. Adding different features and for the first time, establishing a direct link (chat) so the public can collaborate with our journalist (suggest). With workshops, the elderly will learn how to use websites and apps and we will add some modern features for young people. We follow a circular economy, we focus only on digital and creating our site sustainable by adding more advertising space.

Target group

The Zasavska Statistical Region is the smallest region in Slovenia, with a population of 57,000 inhabitants. Despite its size, it is located in the heart of the country, with roughly 3% of Slovenia's population. However, its remote access to highway roads and poorly developed public transport system, particularly outside of city centres, makes it difficult to connect with central Slovenia and other regions. Due to these issues, the region is often overlooked and forgotten.

Older people are underserved in our region and we get a lot of questions from them, about how to use our site, and where to find some information. They call us on the phone or stop us in the street. We help them and show them, but we have learned how the site and app should be, so use for them would be a lot simpler. Older had to learn the use of the internet and apps, especially in the covid times. In our workshops, we will show them how to use what they need. But most important, the app and site will be so simple, that they will not need a lot of help anyways.

Young people in the region face difficulties finding jobs, resulting in a high number of individuals commuting to other major centers. As many as 52.5% of the working-age population in Zasavje commute to work in other regions, with the majority going to the Central Slovenia region. Due to the region's age structure, the primary target group for our services will be the elderly 60+, accounting for more than 30% of the total population. The secondary target group for our project will be young people aged 15-30, because they are our future. Our web portal and app will be the primary ways for individuals to stay informed about what is happening in the region, because other national medias dont cover the smallest region.

Goals of the project

The aim of the project is to increase our readership by updating our site, attracting new readers, and conducting workshops to teach older people how to use it so they can get biased and quality information about the region where they live. We cover five municipalities with a total of 57,000 inhabitants, and our target audience of 25,000 inhabitants comprises people between 15-30 and 60+. We believe that creating an app will attract younger generations who demand the best performance, older people are already looking for as much news as possible (our field experience). Our goal is to go from 4,000 daily users to 8,000 on average, with 20,000 daily users once a month on the best days. We expect to have 120K monthly users, while currently, we have 80-90K. All will be served with information they have failed to have now. In the first three months, we expect to take 2-3 initiatives in our new dialogue window (chat with editors), and after that, we plan to have at least 5-10 initiatives per month. Based on our field experience, we expect to develop at least half of the sent initiatives into journalistic content.