12 Dec Grass­roots Radio fea­tured on the Euro­pean Jour­nal­ism Obser­va­to­ry

We are thrilled to see the Grass­roots Radio project fea­tured on the Euro­pean Jour­nal­ism Obser­va­to­ry (EJO), a net­work of 15 inde­pen­dent non-prof­it media research insti­tutes which aims to bridge jour­nal­ism research and prac­tice in Europe, and to fos­ter pro­fes­sion­al­ism and press free­dom.

The arti­cle describes the work under­way in Roma­nia to build up the two com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tions of Radio Civic Vâr­voru de Jos and Radio Civic Sfân­tu Ghe­o­rghe, which are the first com­mu­ni­ty radio in Roma­nia to serve rur­al com­mu­ni­ties. This work has start­ed with obtain­ing licens­es to broad­cast from the nation­al broad­cast­ing reg­u­la­tor, which – as explained by Liana Ganea, pro­gramme coor­di­na­tor of the project part­ners Active­Watch – was ini­tial­ly reluc­tant to give the green light to a project for which no clear enti­ty was defined as being respon­si­ble.

The news item con­tin­ues with explain­ing the main chal­lenges of long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment that the project is thor­ough­ly address­ing, and describes the effort under­tak­en by RootIO, the open-source civic media sys­tem ide­al for use by low-bud­get FM com­mu­ni­ty radios, as it requires lit­tle phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture and is thus very low-main­te­nance.

The fea­ture ends with a very promis­ing claim:

The Radio Civic project could show the way for­ward for com­mu­ni­ty radio in Roma­nia. At the very least, it demon­strates that the dis­tance between media pro­duc­tion and media con­sump­tion does not have to be so very large, and could help to rede­fine the rela­tion­ship between the media and its audi­ence