Media in post-conflict regions

Millions of people live in post-conflict regions without access to stable independent media. Unbiased and professional media are essential for democratic reconstruction, nation building, and economic livelihoods. As a result, many media organizations in these regions are financially dependent on governments, political parties or religious groups, which may contribute to the conflict in the regions. Klaas Glenewinkel is kick-starting markets for private media advertising in these post-conflict regions. This allows local print, radio, and television media to become more independent from political and religious groups and it enables companies from around the world to support pluralistic societies through their advertising budget. He is working through a research and advertising agency that is dramatically lowering entry-barriers into the fragmented and under-researched media markets in post-conflict regions. Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) is indeed one of a few of Germany s private media development citizen organizations (COs); Glenewinkel has trained journalists and independent media outlets in many post-conflict countries, such as Iraq, Sudan, Tunisia, and Afghanistan. For more than ten years, he improved their journalistic quality through on-the-job training programs. In all these years, he saw many well trained and professionally working independent media outlets go bankrupt after Western donors left the country. Realizing that business and management competencies can be just as important as journalistic quality, Glenewinkel started to amplify MICT s training programs two years ago. He began to train media outlets on how to generate revenue through advertising and started to match them with international and local advertisement clients. Now Klaas has created a new for-profit entity, Plural Media Services, a media and advertising sales organization that builds on MICT s long standing personal network and contacts within the field of local independent media. Plural trains journalists to be media managers and then plays the role of an international matchmaker bridging the existing gap to commercial advertisers (international and local companies) by facilitating advertising campaigns. These advertising campaigns create win-win-win situations for companies, local media, and citizens. While local media earn impartial income and build internal capacities, citizens gain further economic citizenship as they are able to participate in a broader and more sustainable market. Web site: http://www.mict-international.org/