Medienkongress 2011

The guests of this panel were as international as possible, coming from Uruguay, Cape Town, Switzerland and Germany. But apart from the obvious differences of speech, culture and political situations, they all have something in common: they represent an alternative media. Alternative in the way they approach the news and in how they are financed.

The panel was about to begin when La Diara made its debut as a video. The newsroom was in front of the public and the journalists who work there tryed to explain what the newspaper is.

“La Diaria is my girlfriend“, “It´s a job that changed my life“, “the best job I ever had“, “It´s the possibility to do journalism in a colective maner“. These were a few of the answers that came across the screen. Just moments later the public was already in love with the newspaper and I could not help but remember the where I work back home.

But La Diaria and his editor in chief, Marcelo Pereira, were not the only stars of the show. Cape Town TV, a community television station in South Africa was represented by Karen Thorne.  Bettina Dytrich, a journalist from the WOZ in Switzerland, and Randy Kaufmann from the german newspaper TAZ was also in the panel.

Everyone of these media has a unique form of financing. TAZ, WOZ and La Diaria belong to the people who read them and not to a private investor like most of the media. This, they explained, made it possible for them to work more independently. Cape Town TV also enjoys this freedom because its financial model is that of a mixed economy owned by non profit organizations and the community they broadcast to.

But this independence has given them a few headaches along the way. Most of them started with small budgets, journalists who accepted low salaries or worked for free and had to fight in order to stay alive. Cape Town TV, for example, had to struggle for 18 years with the government in order to get a license and now operates with few equipment, some of which was donated by people of the community. 

Over the years they have gone through some struggles, but the community they write for has supported them. Bettina Dytrich from WOZ explained that for many years now they have a double subscription modality which many of their readers have adopted in order to show their support for the paper.

These media are examples of how independent work can be done, but there are many more. During the conference I was constantly being reminded of the newspaper I work in back in El Salvador, El Faro. The stories these four panelist told were so much alike to the ones I have heard and seen. Journalist working for nothing, but loving what they do. 

This article was written by Jimena Aguilar, a journalist in El Salvador and an intern at Der Freitag.