Azerbaijan
Difficult professional and economic conditions, especially for print media, challenge the media sector in Azerbaijan. A variety of media organizations and media outlets exist, however only a few independent newspapers manage to publish newspapers of limited circulation. The national broadcast media are better developed, with more advertisement funds available as most Azeris rely on television for information and entertainment. IMS is working to support the media sector in Azerbaijan by strengthening the professionalism, as well as providing a platform for cross-sectoral media development.Archive
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A free space for journalists in Azerbaijan
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Every day at half past nine, Amid, 25, leaves his home in a small town near Heydar Aliyev International Airport and commutes to the Azerbaijan Media Centre in downtown Baku. He is a reporter with Riyad Media – an online news agency which is barely one year old
By Ali S. Novruzov, Azerbaijan Media Centre
Riyad Media currently enjoys its headquarters at the IMS-supported Azerbaijan Media Centre, which provides Azerbaijani journalists and bloggers with free workstations and high speed Internet access, something which up-and-coming media organisations often have difficulty finding the funds for. The Media Centre also plays a vital role in placing sensitive societal issues on the news agenda through its debate programme. Read more here.
Embracing new technology
Amid Taghiyev is a long-time friend and now a partner of Rashad Mehdiyev, who conceived the idea of founding an online news agency nearly a year ago. While studying journalism at a third-rate private university with an outdated curriculum, Amid and Rashad shared an idea of publishing their newspaper.
Countless difficulties, including financial ones, left their dream unfulfilled until they decided to embrace new technologies and go online. Though they were happy to circumvent problems that killed their first dream, they had little idea of how an online news agency worked. Moreover, Amid did not know how to operate a website.
However, sitting in the premises of the IMS-supported Azerbaijan Media Centre, Amid Taghiyev and his partner in Riyad Media now have free facilities from which they can work on the agency’s website. In the longer perspective, the news agency is hoping to hire a webmaster to do this work, so that Amid may do more story reporting from the field. In fact, Riyad Media has no budget – it lacked a founding capital and has not generated any revenues since its establishment.
Learning by doing
Riyad Media still survives and even thrives. Recently, two more people joined their tiny staff – one is a reporter in countryside, dispatching interesting news during his spare time and the other is a self-appointed PR specialist, managing the agency’s relations with press services of numerous public and private institutions, as well as promoting their website through Facebook. Both are volunteers.
No-cost operation
The Azerbaijan Media Centre creates opportunities for Azerbaijani journalists and bloggers by providing free workstations with high speed Internet access, subscriptions to all major national publications and a comprehensive media archive.
Although a “no-cost operation” may sound fascinating to media experts, Riyad Media is looking for ways to generate revenue through ads in order to hire a webmaster and free up main staff for more crucial duties.
Spending most of his time working on the Riyad Media website’s technical aspects, Amid is frustrated: “Though I enjoy the work I do,” he says, “I also want to have more time for reporting."
“I believe we still have more to achieve.” Read more here about the Azerbaijan Media Centre in Baku.
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