2011 was an unprecedentedly active year for the “Journalists for the Future” NGO. The organized events included workshops, advocacy initiatives, master classes, a conference and other projects. JFF kept on realizing also researches and investigations in the field of media available in the archives of JNews.am media support platform.

All of these initiatives followed a unique goal – to promote the dissemination of pluralism in Armenia, the establishment of freedom of expression and the increase of public confidence towards the media.

Some of the initiatives realized this year were the logical continuation of the projects started in the previous year (2010), among them the “Internet: Stable Bridge of Communication for the Deaf” project and JNews.am media support platform funded by the Open Society Foundations – Armenia, as well as the “New Media Workshops for Media Community” project implemented with the support of the Social Transformation Program (Matra) of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the OSCE Office in Yerevan.

The 8-month project “New Media Workshops for Media Community” was over in June 2011. During this period JFF succeeded to organize 11 events: three 3-day workshops, three trainings in the regions of Armenia - Gyumri, Gavar and Goris, 4 master classes and a regional conference. Overall 180 participants – media experts, journalism teachers, regional and metropolitan journalists, students and civic activists – took part in all these events. Media experts conducting workshops and master classes were Ivan Zassoursky and Grigory Shvedov from Russia, and Arthur Papyan, Samvel Martirosyan and Gayane Mirzoyan from Armenia.

About 30 media experts from Armenia, Georgia and Russia were present at the concluding conference of the project.

An experimental regional news platform Ditaket.blogspot.com was created as part of the same project. It had 25,000 visitors during the first two months. Another specialized blog – Tmtarmenia.blogspot.com – was created for the journalism teachers.

One of the most significant achievements was also the development of the “New Media Tools” course currently involved in the curriculum of journalism department of one of the state higher educational institutions in Yerevan.

And thanks to the “Internet: Stable Bridge of Communication for the Deaf” project 22 hearing impaired citizens learnt to use new media tools and obtained skills of photography in the course of eight months. Special meetings were held between the project participants and the public sector representatives, as well as journalists.

For the first time in Armenia an online platform –Deafnet.blogspot.com – was created as a result of this project. It represents the issues and events of the deaf and hearing impaired community in Armenia. The blog contains also a database of the organizations functioning for people with hearing disorders.

Online pages for the deaf community were created also at Twitter, Picassa, Facebook and on other social platforms. Especially “The Voice of Silence” group on Facebook had a great success. At present it has 300 members and discussions regarding the hearing impaired are unfolded here. There were 1400 discussions with about 50,000 views on the wall of “The Voice of Silence” group in the course of six months. 

Worth mentioning, JFF started an additional initiative while implementing this project. It was addressed to restoration of the rights of hearing impaired to be informed. The main goal of the year-long initiative was the broadcasting of a news program on Public TV accompanied by gestures’ language.  The initiative was started on January, 2011 with an open letter sent to the Chairman of the RA National Commission on Television and Radio (NCTR) Grigor Amalyan and is continued until now through public events.

During 12 months of this year the local print, online and radio media and blogs referred to this issue more than 70 times. However, the issue remained neglected by Armenian TV companies which after all gave no importance to the rights of the deaf to be informed.

Nevertheless, based on JFF initiative the National Assembly adopted a bill which determined that Public as well as all the private TV companies must have news programs accompanied by either sign language or Armenian subtitles.

Although there is not yet a news program broadcasted in sign language and it is not clear whether any of the TV companies would air such a program, however this initiative enabled to attract public attention to the issues of Armenian citizens with hearing disorders.

And here are some figures which present the achievements of JNews.am Media Support Platform.

• About 1,000 articles on the situation of media, freedom of information and media events in Armenia and neighboring countries both in English and Armenian;
• About 20 media researches and investigations;
• About 65,000 views from 100 countries of the world between January and December of 2011 (Google’s statistics);
• The facebook page of JNews.am has 650 members (mainly representatives of the media). It is viewed an average by 1,500 users per week. And during one year articles posted on facebook were viewed more than 200,000 times.

In 2011 JFF set the beginning of new initiatives realization of which will be continued in 2012. In new year JFF will continue to support freedom of expression and dissemination of pluralism in Armenia. Coverage of parliamentary elections in Armenia by the local media, as well as the digitization of television and the transition processes of e-government will stand in the spotlight.

Implementation of the above-mentioned events and any success would have been impossible without the participants, partners and donors of our projects to whom we are very thankful.

This year was full of difficulties and achievements and due to them we are stepping 2012 more mature, skillful and ready to realize positive changes in the new year.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!

With the best wishes,

Suren Deheryan

President of “Journalists for the Future” NGO