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Euro-Balkan

The 'Electronic News Archive' Project Proposal

a. Background Information

Since 1991, when the Republic of Macedonia became formally an independent country as well as a constitutional democracy and a scene of a free market economy, the number of locally published newspapers and magazines, both in Macedonian and Albanian language, has substantially increased. The archiving of the press published has been fragmented, poorly organized and hardly accessible to the public, including professional journalists. Press publishers keep the hard copy archive for their own titles only and some of the journalists keep their private ones.

The only concentrated – although inefficient – archive is kept by the National Library that according to the law is provided with the hard copy of every publication in the country. However, working mostly with the traditional, pre-digital methods, unprepared for dealing with the new capacity of the press, the National Library is not able to successfully fulfill the demand for the updated, easily and regularly available record.

b. Project Activity and Products

The Electronic News Archive (ENA) is one of the programs of Euro-Balkan and started operations in October 1999, with an initial grant provided by OSI-Macedonia. The long-term aim of the program is to provide the full coverage of the press published in Macedonia, including Albanian and Turkish ones. Until now the total of 24,000 documents/articles are being archived from the following dailies: Dnevnik, Utrinski vesnik, Nova Makedonija, Makedonija Denes and the weekly magazines: Start, Zum, Fokus and Denes. The last two are being archived on an occasional basis, according to the importance of the subject. There are four staff members of which three are working on the documentation and indexing, while the system engineer with primary duties for the overall operation of the Euro-Balkan is responsible for the technical assistance . The selection of titles has been based on their popularity expressed by the number of sold copies (Dnevnik according to the latest surveys is the most popular one, both in terms of sale and evaluation of the readers), the professional stand, the variety of the political association as well as the principle of providing the continuity of information (only Nova Makedonija and Vecer, still edited within the state-owned publishing house inherited from the Yugoslav press infrastructure, have been continuously appearing since 1991). After five months, Euro-Balkan provides the database indexed with keywords characterizing the articles. Thanks to the financial support by Press Now from the Netherlands, Euro-Balkan has succeeded to install the archive on the Internet. Therefore, the whole archive is available through Internet research.

c. Project Objectives

The long-term aim of the project is to provide the full coverage of the press published in Macedonia including the Albanian and Turkish ones, available via Internet in the form of indexed database. We plan the archive to be self-sufficient after 3 years, with gradual introduction of the payment with the time.

In the short term, the objective is to assure the very existence of the archive through keeping the office and increasing the number of employees.

d. Target Audience

• Research-based and investigative journalism,

• Social researchers of various kinds: historians, sociologists, political scientists and media specialists to whom the press is the major if not only source of information of the contemporary history

• Government institutions at least potentially interested in their public image

• General public seeking information and civic knowledge.

e. Project Impact and Results

Our archive should contribute to the improvement of the journalistic, academic and civic culture by making it easier, if not just possible, to contextualize the events in their past developments and various depictions. Keeping record of events and opinions should contribute to the journalists' professional honesty, politicians' responsibility and keep the public well informed as well as provided with the different opinions and interpretations. The press archive is also a well-recognized source for social researchers.

f. Funding Sources

The project was established thanks to the funds of OSI Macedonia and Press Now, which covered the equipment and office expenses as well as the 6 month-salaries for four employees: one computer engineer and three data analyzers. The further sponsorship is promised by the OSI Macedonia on the matching basis.

g. Institutional Information

Euro-Balkan is a non-governmental, non-partisan and non-profit think-tank institution founded in September 1999. Its main objective is to implement European Union ideas and policies in Macedonia as well as to promote co-operation and integration in the Balkans.

Its permanent activities are:

• the digital archiving of the Macedonian press

• monitoring of international political and economic developments as depicted in the foreign press, especially those related with the forthcoming negotiation process between the EU and the Republic of Macedonia, resulting in everyday publication of “Dnevni Vesti” review, mostly for governmental purposes

• organization of workshops for business and administration.

Among its special activities the most important have been:

• Monitoring of Printed Media during the Presidential Elections 1999

• Monitoring of printed Media during the Local Elections 2000

• Ohrid Summer University, July 4–28, 2000; Summer school on Mass Movements as Security Challenge and Summer School on Industrial relations

• International Conference on the Perspectives for the development of Macedonian-Bulgarian relations, November 27-28, 2000

• International Conference: “Confidence Building and Democratic Strategies for Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies, June 10-11, 2000

• “Security Challenges and Southern Balkans development”, joint projects of think-tanks from Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia

• “Ethnic Minority Representation in the Governments: Romania, Slovakia and Macedonia

•  “Dissidents in Macedonia”, part of the “Glossary of Dissidents in the Soviet Block in Europe 1956-89”

•  “Introducing programmatic evaluation in Public Administration in Macedonia”

• Handbook for Civil Servants

• “NGOs and the Improvement of Inter-ethnic Relations in Macedonia”, seminar, May 11-14, 2000

• International Conference: “Stability Pact: Harmonization of Expertise on SEE”, October 6-8, 2000

• International seminar: “The Crisis of the Subject: Deconstruction/reflecting the Unique Subject”, May 11-14, 2000

• Open seminar: “Contemporary Issues of the Feminist Scientific and Theoretical Thinking”, November 01 – December 06, 1999

• Directory of Women’s NGO Movement in Macedonia

• “Vote Without Prejudice”, media campaign for local elections, September 2000

• Regional Symposium: “Gender Studies Curricula Development”, December 4-5, 2000

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