More than half of the municipalities in the country do not have a local media outlet of their own. According to the data in the analysis, five of them are not covered by regional traditional media either.
Author: Igor K. Ilievski
Just before reaching Kriva Palanka, the car radio lost its signal. Radio signals do not travel easily through the narrow Kriva Reka valley. But the silence here is not only about geography. For more than a decade, Kriva Palanka has had no local radio station.
The last local radio station closed 12 or 13 years ago. It was also the town’s last local media outlet. Since then, this small town in the north-east of the country, about 100 kilometres from Skopje, has become what is known as a news desert , a place without a local media outlet of its own.
“The last local media outlet was the radio station, which closed more than 12 or 13 years ago. For a while, there was also a television station, but it shut down several years before the radio,” says Aleksandar Dimitrovski, a lawyer from Kriva Palanka.
For more than a decade, there has been no local media outlet regularly reporting on events in the town.
“We get our information through the public communication channels of the institutions, their websites and social media profiles,” Dimitrovski says.
Institutions in Kriva Palanka regularly publish information about their activities and services. For years, the town has ranked among the highest in analyses of municipal openness indexes conducted by non-governmental organisations. But these are information published by the institutions themselves and mainly concern their own work.
Journalistic stories that should tell of the problems local residents face, ask uncomfortable questions of the authorities and seek answers in the public interest often remain untold because there is no local media outlet continuously following these issues.
The Strongest Medium Is the Town Bazaar
For a small town, Kriva Palanka is surprisingly lively. The streets in the centre, and especially the cafés, are full of local residents of all ages – from schoolchildren to pensioners.
According to surveys by non-governmental organisations, more than half of pensioners in Kriva Palanka get their information from television, while more than a third use the internet. Three quarters of them use a mobile phone.
As in many small towns, almost everyone entering a café greets those already inside.
“When there is no local media outlet, the strongest medium is the town bazaar,” Dimitrovski explains with a smile, before asking:
“Did you know that our women’s basketball team are champions? The table tennis players are champions too,” the lawyer adds proudly.
His town has plenty to be proud of: an art colony, an international theatre festival, and it has even been named the best-decorated town during the New Year holidays. But beyond the good news, how many problems are there that a professional media outlet should be reporting on?
“We need a local media outlet. It doesn’t matter what kind – radio, television, anything,” Dimitrovski says.
The municipalities of Kriva Palanka and neighbouring Rankovce are two of the five municipalities where NarativAI’s analysis found there is no traditional local media outlet of their own and no coverage by regional media.
“The Whole of Sveti Nikole Listened to the Radio”
Although Sveti Nikole, a town in the Ovče Pole area in the central-eastern part of the country, is not without local media, its media landscape is considerably poorer than in the days residents remember with nostalgia.
Radio is a story of its own.
“Two or three decades ago, I listened with all my senses because there was something worth listening to. I was also a voice that had something to say, and there were people to listen to me. We were loud and we were heard,” says Ile Mihajlovski, a former journalist at Radio Sveti Nikole, a humanitarian worker, activist and now a teacher in the town.
He spent nine years at the town radio station and two years at Kanal 77 radio in Štip.
“Those were different times. Back then, people listened to the radio. We were the first to organise a 48-hour radio marathon. The whole of Sveti Nikole listened to us,” the former presenter recalls nostalgically.
The town still has its own radio station, and in the meantime it has gained another, mainly music-based radio station, as well as a television station. The former newspaper Ovčepolski Glas is no longer published, but a periodical magazine is still issued in the town.
Still, despite the existence of media outlets, the town is much more “deserted,” the former journalist says.
“All those radio stations, television channels, podcasts and whatever else is technologically advanced are useless if you feel as though you are deaf. Because the voice you hear has not woken you up. And you feel as though the town has fallen asleep, gone deaf, died,” Mihajlovski says.
The teacher places his hopes in young people who, in his words, can “turn the desert into an oasis.”
“It takes very little for the desert to become an oasis – to encourage the voices of young people, for them to become messengers of truth, filled with empathy to their very core. Every small and large town needs such a voice, one that resonates, that is strong, that reaches us all, wakes us up and gives us back the hearing that has long since gone deaf. Young people, wake up, be the voice that needs to wake us up and motivate us,” the teacher says.
49 of 80 Municipalities Without Local Media
NarativAI’s analysis shows that of the 80 municipalities in the country, including those in Skopje, 49 do not have a local media outlet of their own. Most of them are covered by regional media based in larger nearby towns, but according to the analysis, five municipalities have no coverage from either local or regional traditional media.
Our research found that Macedonia currently has 19 print publications – newspapers and magazines. Of these, 16 are published by publishers based in Skopje, while publishers in Štip, Sveti Nikole and Prilep each have one title.
Over the past decade, according to the list of deleted publishers, 37 print publications have been removed from the register, including seven daily newspapers. Among those removed are two publications by publishers from Bitola and one from Štip.
According to the data cited in the analysis, the country has 59 radio channels: eight with nationwide coverage, 14 regional and 36 local. Radio stations operate in Skopje, Bitola, Gevgelija, Gostivar, Kavadarci, Kičevo, Kočani, Kumanovo, Novo Selo, Prilep, Štip, Struga, Strumica, Sveti Nikole, Tetovo, Valandovo, Veles and Vinica.
Since 2014, according to the analysis, 35 radio stations have closed. These include local radio stations in Delčevo, Berovo, Dolneni, Lipkovo, Mavrovo and Rostuše, and Pehčevo.
Kratovo, Negotino, Makedonska Kamenica, Kruševo, Dojran, Demir Hisar, Centar Župa and Čaška are covered by regional media.
The text identifies Kriva Palanka, Rankovce, Demir Kapija and Debrca as municipalities without coverage from either local or regional traditional media.
In Ohrid, meanwhile, according to the analysis, traditional local media outlets have closed, while the existing local media are online.
According to the same data, the country has 43 television channels: 17 with nationwide coverage, 12 regional and 13 local.
The radio signal returned as we were leaving Kriva Palanka. But the local media outlet that once carried the voices of its residents has long since disappeared. Their problems, questions and everyday concerns still lack someone to report on them regularly.