Crime and Corruption Reporting Network LUPA is a non-profit, non-governmental association established to promote and improve investigative journalism in Montenegro. The association was founded by a group of freelance professional journalists, who have many years of experience working in the media. IPI’s Transition Accelerator helped them increase their reach by launching a new interactive product:
The focus of LUPA’s work is researching organized crime and corruption in the country and abroad. After several years of work, the founders of LUPA also launched the informative PRESS Online Portal (www.press.co.me), which, in addition to the promotion of investigative journalism by LUPA, deals with a wide range of social events in the country and abroad, and which very quickly gained thousands of readers on a daily basis in Montenegro.
During the six-month period of the Transition Accelerator, LUPA and PRESS managed to significantly increase the number of followers on social networks.
This was achieved using the new interactive platform “Report a problem”, which was created on the PRESS Online Portal. This improved contact with readers, allowing them for the first time to report topics they considered interesting for research.
Also, the editorial office equipped the studio for the podcast and produced and published two shows. The podcast primarily deals with the fight against crime and corruption, thus making an important contribution to the rule of law in Montenegro, which is a candidate country for membership in the European Union.
The knowledge of our journalists’ team was further strengthened through mobile journalism training. Valuable equipment for mobile journalism was acquired, which is now used on a daily basis. During the Transition Accelerator, we produced a large number of articles that had accompanying video content, created using mobile journalism tools.
The impact of the Accelerator is clear in the numbers. Before the start of the project, the PRESS portal had 6,878 followers on Facebook, and now it has 9,020 followers – a 31 per cent increase. The team also noted a 110 per cent increase in the number of subscribers to the YouTube channel of the PRESS portal from 310 to 650 subscribers. Meanwhile, the YouTube channel of the portal LUPA had 465 subscribers before the start of the project, which has risen by 17 per cent to 543 subscribers.
In the future, we plan to continue our work on the podcast, given that we now have a functional studio. We plan to continue using mobile journalism equipment, especially for reporting from the field on important topics for Montenegrin society and citizens.
Our new platform “Report a problem” will continue to be active and this is an added value that other informative online media in Montenegro do not have. It brings us closer to our audience and helps us cover the topics that they find most relevant.
A very important thing for us is the increase of organic traffic both on the portals and on the portal pages on social networks, which we will pay special attention to in the future. We also plan to apply some of the monetization models we discussed with the trainers during the implementation of the project.
We are extremely grateful to the International Press Institute for supporting us financially and with knowledge, as well as good ideas for the development of our media platforms.
The Transition Accelerator is part of the Media Innovation Europe (MIE) project, co-funded by the European Commission. The programme is led by the International Press Institute, and implemented in collaboration with Thomson Media, the Media Development Foundation and BIRN and is intended to empower media outlets as they navigate the digital transition, giving them journalistic tools and skills in diverse products and business structures in order to reach audiences and bring sustainability.
