What it’s like to be a journalist in Latvia and Estonia. Inga Spriņģe and Holger Roonemaa | 1

Welcome everyone! My name is Liga Wezovlinja and I am a communication researcher at Riga's Transn University. And you are listening to Media and Society podcast. In our episodes, we will provide a platform for in-depth conversations about the ways people experience, feel and think about media and journalism. Aimed at media professionals and media scholars, the podcast explores the multifaceted relationships between media, journalism and audiences in two Baltic countries, Latvia and Estonia. Episode 1. What it's like to be a journalist in Latvia and Estonia. This is our first episode and it's my pleasure to invite for talk to wonderful guests, a transnational journalist couple in Spring yet, a ward winning Latin journalist and founder of the Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism, Rebaltica and Holger Ronema. Also a ward winning Estonia, investigative journalist and editor, team leader of investigative journalists at Delphine News site in Estonia. Welcome, boys! Hey! Hi! Professionally, you are two journalists with roots in either Latvia or Estonia. At the same time, you are also a life partner, which makes me assume that most probably it doesn't go unnoticed that what it is like to be a journalist in Latvia or Estonia. How would you describe what it is like to be a journalist in Latvia or in Estonia in over days? So maybe I can actually start telling how it is to be a journalist in Estonia. I am actually envious to Estonian journalism because size-wise Estonia is much smaller but media consumption-wise it's much stronger and it proves that actually the size doesn't matter always so much. Even if that amount less readers or viewers still Estonia media has more trust by the audience while comparing to Latvia, it's much smaller. I always have a pain when we publish some international corporations and then I measure how much my story is viewed on leading Latvia and websites and how much the same Congress or his colleagues on Estonian and the numbers always in Estonia are three or four times more. So it's the proof that Estonia and Estonia media are much better regarded. Well yes, we do compare with the numbers occasionally and in that sense that's correct that we can see that our story is in general or on average let's say reach a wider part of the Estonia society which means that to answer a question how is it to be a journalist in Estonia or how does it feel to be an investor journalist in Estonia? It feels quite okay actually. Now for the last six or seven years it almost feels like working in a startup. It's the same company that I'm working now again for the last four or five years running and it really does feel like a startup especially two, three, four years ago the growth numbers that we had online as well for digital subscribers like every day you were every week you were like breaking records which means that luckily Estonia and the society has understood the relevance of why they need to subscribe, why they need to pay digitally to be able to read in-depth original reporting and that journalism and yes at Delphi we now have somewhere around one hundred and five thousand maybe a little bit more people who pay just read our stories on Delphi which means that we feel quite comfortable that we're not just lone voicing a desert but actually we conceive at our work mix and impact. You mentioned this sense of startup, how do you feel about situation in Latvia? Most probably you have a little bit different sense because you work in like journals, MENGEO, not like mainstream media organization. If I look from two perspectives from one like general one I still feel like we are in this thinking ship. I don't feel in Latvia and journalism this kind of startup vibe again by computing numbers how many people read those stories and how many people read in Estonia. If you talk about like NANDROF it is especially the Baltica we can't complain. We have trust from our community. Yes we are also a lot of one of the hated media I assume in Latvia but in general it's harder for Latvia and media and it comes together like from all aspects because we see that also there is less trust to government institutions. We are more negative, we are more pessimist so we don't trust to anyone, we don't trust to media to government to healthcare institutions and so on. So it goes hand to hand. Well in Estonia I know public broadcaster also has much higher viewership numbers like in Latvia for example. How do you mention that Estonians have understood the role of media and appreciate your work but how do you feel what is your professional role nowadays and what audience expects from journalists in Estonia and then afterwards in you can maybe speak about Latvians. It's a very difficult question actually as an investigative journalist I think it's quite clear for me that I know what the audience expects and I also know what the literature and chief expects from our team and it is still to uncover things that have not been uncovered that are serious and important and what the general public should be aware of. I'll be talking about Russian influence and such things are we talking about corruption, about hidden or not so clearly defined problems in the society and so that's the kind of work that we are doing but in general I think that the expectations for media, for journalists in Estonia are pretty much connected to scrutinize your authorities but to be the one doing the checks. I can then take and continue what the audience expects from us and I think Latvia especially if we can feel it we have been taught at universities it's via journalists which should be neutral we just report about things but what I can feel now people actually want us to make changes say one solutions because that is this land of this feeling like we are tired of this negative news we are tired of the wars of conflicts of disasters climate changes we want some solutions tell us what I can do and recently I read a report what younger generation who will be media consumers in 2030 when they will actually want this was one of the big aspects she was saying we want to do something so you report reveals a problem and give us tools tell us what we can go and do I don't like to use this positive news is something different but like this solution based journalism or explanatory journalism and also like Reuters digital media reports they do on annual basis it also shows that there is this news fatigue if we see what people actually want to consume mislegs this explanatory kind of journalism and I think this is where we will need to go to move maybe public broadcaster will stay like also of course you need to cover general news but especially if you are commercial or some niche media this is where we will need to move because this is also what we see what people do when they follow on social media say follow is that some kind of practical influencers where you can learn how to I don't know lose weight or become more mindful or how to save money for example or where you learn some kind of new things so I think this is also about journalism should go because now also with artificial intelligence there will be more and more noise I can agree with you and you are absolutely that we can sense the news fatigue in Estonia as well we have been living from one crisis to an next crisis to a third four fifth and I have lost count how many crisis in the crisis in the last five years but we can see that the audience is actually tired and we can see that in connection to hard news stories for example but the number of readership on average is getting a little bit lower when it used to and that's something that we are trying to figure out how to solve at the part of a solution definitely is what I think I was suggesting but the Fickware is another challenge as well that we still need to figure out how to report about the same heart and stress-causing topics so that the audience would still find it not the only relevant but they would also see that this is something that they need to be aware of and then this is something that they can consume as media consumers I think that's one of the toughest challenges but do you have already some recipe in mind so what might work what might help to work in this constructive journalism way in general like we need to change some angle how we actually do it Olga what about you do you have any new approaches for your team we have in Delphi for sure but you have a work of our investigative team is a little bit more specific I'm afraid that at some stage we are in risk of becoming with old dinosaurs who are doing things with old-fashioned way and we are trying to figure out a little bit innovative ways how to highlight problems Sir, you're called for interrupting you I think you need to mention the Danska Bank show one of the core scandals in the Stoenian society over the last 10 years have been the Stoenian banks are still on registered banks facilitating money laundering through Estonia money laundering 30 money coming from Russia as a by chance and all similar corrupt countries and moving through Estonia banks to the other western financial institutions and they got been luxury properties etc and money laundering is very like technical boring try thing yeah topic but it's very difficult to write about it in a sexy and engaging way but it's very very difficult to actually do it in a engaging weight with local audience. And the more surprises I was lost summer when a playwright from a stolen drama theater approached me and said that we are planning to make the Daneska money And Daneska bank money laundering scandal into a theater play I couldn't imagine it at all, but how would it be possible and at why? No one understands about it Yes, but we allowed the theater to read some of the Documents that we had in our position that were the basis of our reporting We came to our office, we spent hours reading the documents Of course, like all the stories that we had done and then other journalists of our media and the story had done And now two weeks ago, we premiered it in Tartu as one of the flagship events at the Tartu Capital of Culture 2024 program and it was a huge event It was like 40 people involved of 30 actors, I think something like that But we had a live band of 405 people doing music at the integrated into the story The story had really well been made human They sold out 11 performances, 550 people in the audience in every performance We sold it out in minutes, not in days or weeks, but in minutes People are writing desperately on Facebook, but how can I get? Someone please help me find a ticket, I need to see it It's free and half hours, really fast pace A lot of video we integrated in were seen by scene It runs simultaneously as a theater performance and the basic present Netflix series Critics consider it one of the most notable theatrical productions Again, since 2014 probably So I think that's one of the cases where we see a different way how to reach the audience Because people who went to see that performance in theater They are not probably each other on audience who would come to eat or boring try money on their stories So that's a very very very cool example, thank you I'm still very impressed, this is where I also watched it And this is why we're about to actually try it also We showed our four episodes about the pollution in society And we also have this pop-up magazine as you say like theater But it was a bit different because we together with actors telling all stories So it is against this new kind of ways how to engage your community, reach out to these people and talk about actually Or grow up as more to show that we are also humans and how we are doing our investigations And how we feel when we are working in our job It's again, it's kind of really like, called we said very correctly, like start of mold You need to hold the time thing, sometimes I'm so tired, I'm so tired of thinking Yeah, we want to be all dinosaur and just do just journalism not to think about how we will show it on a TikTok and Instagram And Facebook and Facebook is shutting down everything and then someone is reporting and Yeah, but we need to find this kind of creative ways also how to show to the audience How to illustrate the problems that we're writing about How do you do storytelling? Is it like cinema, it's infographics, it's visuals, it's audio, like podcasts or whatever It's all about storytelling, not a day and because people have so short tensions Fun because they are tired of all the time of these old disasters We need to be creative all the time and think what's actually what's to do and then how to do it But then again, is there a limit for your creativity? Because you already mentioned that sometimes you feel so tired just to think of the new ways How to talk about your stories and investigations I think creativity is one of the resources that we actually have it It's very easy to fall into routines and that I can sense that in our work actually as well We need to engage the audience but if we want to also have a classic impact We still need to keep that boring part somewhere as well I was thinking about creativity Sometimes also you need creativity just to make your life more interesting because it's boring You know You report about money laundering, all these offshore things and nothing changes Let's just create something interesting, that's why we had last year in Taogapu, so you made this pop-up editorial where we would pretend in main pedestrians Street in the city and we just spoke for a week with the people Or we do like this theater So it's also one thing is how to reach audience Another thing is also how to make life interesting for ourselves You already mentioned this news fatigue and also how audience actually reacts to these new approaches New offers you provide but overall what is common and what are other unique but turns in Latvia and or in Estonian audiences The one thing I was still thinking of myself lately why is that it's such a gap that people lead much less I can reach with my stories and all the stories from the same project And one explanation is I don't know if it's empirical I haven't checked it but Latvia media market is more fragmented Like we have everything fragmented, we have 10 political parties in government and the same about media as well in Estonia You have three big news websites and one niche And in Latvia we have three big then at least two, three Clicked by two websites and so this audience becomes like much smaller And recently I did experiment I did one of my stories to both TV net and Delphi Usually we have our partners TV net They are both published and on both websites the audience was equal Which shows that it is fragmented that people who consume Delphi They only consume Delphi and people who consume TV net is good TV net So when we count together all these websites maybe I will get off of Estonian reach But it's about these bubbles and this fragmentation which is I don't know good or bad But I think it also makes life harder for media because you have less subscribers, you have less money The reason why the Estonian audience is so much large comes down to maybe two factors Or one main factor is that we have two large private media companies One is like so called Delphi group and then we have a so called post-immens group Delphi started combining the newspapers They were part of the same extra group in total So Delphi started bringing them their own content to be published like through Delphi or under Delphi Which means that Delphi was able to kind of naturally include original and more in-depth reporting When it would have been possible for Delphi's news team Because still 15 years ago, 10 years ago maybe a little bit less Delphi was doing quite little of original news reporting But if you had like three or four newspapers whose job is to do original reporting And you can publish their content That kind of allowed to build that trust or expectation that it's okay to pay online for a digital subscription as well And on the other hand, what post-immens was doing, what post-immens had the largest newspaper in Estonia Still has post-immens, maybe it's not for largest anymore But it also has the local regional newspapers And then they were able to build that into large online publishing through post-immens So that's the two pillars that brought together the audiences and then the makes for audiences Larger in Estonia But you had that possibility, you had that good legacy coming from newspapers And that you were able to turn it into a digital audience In Latvia's case in TV, in Telfia, I think the neither of them have any newspaper connection All reporting but they do has always been original And beside all of that we have also this bad history vis-a-vis their press What happened with newspaper DNA and DNA's business which was bought by All the garrxes we later discovered which also was this fighting, paid articles, bad journalism It also created this taste maybe in some part of societies that you can trust in media in general But you already mentioned trust How do you think what are the reasons why there is such a rather big distrusting media and in general? I mean general But I probably, I don't know, a few hundred scientific research papers on that as well There are so many reasons starting from the social media platforms which have dominated for over the last 15 years and then turned it to increasing dominance with all of their algorithms When Varvolzbiz Gapfet had told you about this When people were not willing to pay for online subscriptions for classic media In the US as well, the Trump peak happened in 2016 Before that still largely the main image of newspapers were struggling a lot And they still are if you take a look at Washington Post For example, which has lost 40-50% of its page views They are making a huge loss So social media for sure is I think what is general is polarization in the investor's head We can see the rise of populist and far-right parties Whose one of their key strategies is to criticize Or to make fun of an attack independent media for example It's a deliberate way how to cause polarization Of course you can always say that it's a question of inverse's head Which was first was it the chicken or or the egg But which caused the polarization and so on But yes as well from deficit perspective I can say that 10-15 years ago for sure After the financial crisis and the during the crisis When the papers, the correlation numbers and subscription numbers Were falling quickly we didn't have a digital subscriber's coming We also had that journalistic lapse of quality at that time When every older, more experienced reporter that you lose Who goes out of a business you need to hire someone straight out of university Inevitably be as good as as as perspective as we are But inevitably you will still have a period where The quality can't be assured as well You will not have as good sources You will not have as good historical memory of things And you know how it goes So I think that also left a gap I can propose some solutions potential like where it might go So one thing already actually we mentioned is changing focus how we produce storytelling and more like kind of this solution based on stories. And I think also we are journalists still. I'm talking about for years to my colleagues, they have been stuff of me. We need to tell more actually how journalism differs from social media, drama, information sources. And now I'm stressing professional journalists because people are asking, "But near at Grigari, Davi is a broad system that people who don't know, it's very click by the, I would say even far right, the website in Latvia, and people don't understand what's the difference between like LSM, probably broadcasts that on this click by the far right news website in Latvia. So we need to explain and educate ourselves." And another thing is we also need to follow this social media trend and show journalistic faces. We need to tell how we work and show our faces. I am subscribing now in New York Times, but a long time before I was consuming it only on Instagram. I can see how they are promoting, there are more and more videos about that. And new stories coming out, there is a court case about Trump, journalists stands in front. It's still like, brain cells, not like TV program. I was left thinking about showing our faces, which is something that we also try to do but still that Telfi has a very wide audience, more than half of the student population or regular readers of Telfi. But still when we do something really notable, we try to get to our media as well, that we like to ask public broadcaster if they would have us on very evening programs or morning programs or radio stations etc. So we still try to reach as wide audience ourselves as well. And that's the case where a report is going to talk to themselves. Sometimes we do an investigation and the more interesting thing is to talk about how you did it. And that's what you will not do in your own story, but maybe what the Navarita station will ask. You did that investigation about money on the internet. Tell me how did you actually get the data, how did you get the information, where did you find the sources and that you talk as much as possible. Of course you can't reveal everything. I think it's something that we will continue thinking and again about creativity. And a lot of journalists are very shy, especially people who are impressed. They don't like to show their faces or hear their voices. And sometimes we need to take that extra step to push ourselves out of a comfort zone and actually show us more to the audience. What I feel that this prestige of profession is rather damaged somehow because even in university we see that potential students, they are not so many anymore as it was like years ago. I have a good example. Last month we needed to hire a new fact checker, which is a very difficult job. And that fact checkers again are some of these preoccupation inside journalism, which is publicly like ridiculed, harassed, removed. I think so. It's a very tough job. And I have never been a fan of public competitions, but we announced the public competition that we are hiring a new fact checker. And I've never been as amazed by the results. We got 31 applications for the job and out of those we invited eight people to a conversation and I saw that we would have needed to invite at least two more. But like the list went too large, but to have like ten job interviews was a little bit too much. And the quality of people who applied it, it really, really, really surprised me. And they were not only people with a journalistic background, but many of them are coming from international relations, history and so on. I can sense that the prestige of a profession has actually grown quite a lot in Estonia. Globally, now the profession journalism is like historically low. The trust, the media and consumption, the media in general is very low. What I'm telling to myself, I'm again going away, big from your question, but maybe we don't need to reach like huge audience, like at least in Latvia, but if we can reach those people who are the ones who are actually doing things. So maybe in this case it's not about how many people reach, but who we reach. And if this, I don't know, 500 or 10,000 who reads this story, if they are the ones who are active and who are actually changing something. So maybe it may need to focus more on work with these people. Instead of like trying to tell general audience that you know, you can trust us. And we want professionally and deep state or cutting a levitate regimes is not paying to us. We just need to do our job as good as I can. That's all what I can do. Don't you think that in Latvia, sometimes those who believe and who trust in media and professional journalism, they do not step up. And they are silent when those couple of very noisy people are telling how bad our journalists. When Estonia had the previous president, I also like how she stood up, publicly saying we have like three problems made in Estonia. When it was something related security, it was before you wore a Ukraine. And the another one was domestic violence and third, when online harassment. Dover journalists and other public people, I've never heard in Latvia when high level politician would stood up and say like online harassment is not okay. Instead, I can see that politicians themselves are doing this. Of course, in Estonia, well politicians are attacking publicly. And it's becoming cool, chandelier, like how can I say something sharp and rude to journalists. It's very normal. But I don't understand it by doing this. They are also diminishing trust to themselves as well. Because then people, general people are like, "Oh, politicians are bad. Journalists are bad. Everyone is bad." And this is where this news fatigue is growing. Instead of some constructive way of approaching things, we are just disseminating everything is so bad. And in Latvia, I think it has reached some critical level. You go everywhere and everywhere, it's a huge pessimism. We don't believe, we don't trust each other. We are just looking for a guilty all the time. And then we don't reach any kind of goals. Regarding trust to journalists as well to media, I remember a few years ago, the current editor-in-chief of Post-Image. I don't remember if he was at that post, that time already. Or not. He wrote the column where he said that no one is afraid of journalists anymore. And then that caused a little bit of debate. That two people need to be afraid of journalists. Or who would need to be afraid of journalists. But now I can see that his point was that, like, no matter what journalism media writes or publishes, that it doesn't change anything. Because the parties don't care. The politicians don't care. They just continue and they go on. But now, the last few years I've seen that actually they do care. Of course, they will always be attacking and accusing media of unprofessional and being too general and not going deep enough and not having historic memories. But comes with our job as well. And that's to some level, it's quite normal. But I think that they actually do care about what media is doing. They feel that public criticism is a driver for change and then for impact. For the last question, I would like to mention the most recent Baltic media health check for 2022 and 2023, which is regular journalistic study that analyzes transfinances and issues of importance in Baltic media markets. And the heading of this recent health check was, will there be a calm after recent storms? Do you feel that there is a calm already? I don't think it's a non-professional. It's a nearest 10 or 15 or 20 years will be a calm. We will need to be all the time in this startup mode, especially because technologies are changing, because the global geopolitical situation is changing. So you are changing all the time. So we will need to think about new ways. We will need to think how to reach people, how to create their trust or recreate their trust. I don't think that there will be times when I start a journal as a minuuspe, but DNI, you just could come on. There will be this annual conference and we are pricing how good revenues we have and everyone is reading and you have impact. I think that's a long time. I know one even, like, dreams about it anymore, but I don't believe that will be kind of calm. In opposite, maybe we need to be afraid of too much calm, which I make a synonym of fatigue, because people don't want to consume anymore at all. We will need to think how to actually get some back. Yeah, absolutely, too much calm is not a good thing, because that will lead you to a routine and when you become sloppy and bored, etc. But regarding the general journalistic infrastructure in Estonia, right now, you might be able to say that it is relatively calm. Of course, where I change is recent that way, but like, it's the last years of development have in general turned out to be pretty good. But I think the key issue, why we can't feel calm is we, everything related to AI and all the challenges. It will pose to journalism and also media models. And then that journalism already has a very bad example of missing out on the internet. And now there is a threat of missing out on AI and that all the impact and changes it will bring to like everyone's lives. So that's something that shouldn't allow any media manager or editor in Estonia or Latvia to feel calm, but to see how to come out as a winner in this shift. Thank you very much. For this conversation, the next episode will continue this conversation on how it is to be a journalist in either Latvia or Estonia. But we will talk with communication researchers from a data perspective and what researchers in Estonia and Latvia have found out about media audiences and journalists. But yeah, once again, thank you very much for your time. This podcast is recorded at RIGS Tradition University Moat Media Studio and is part of a research project making sense of media and non-media centric and also and the approach to the study of media related experiences and perceptions. It is funded by the RSU Internal and External Consultation Project.