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This is The Outlook, IPI’s media innovation newsletter, where we engage with the strategies and tools for innovation and business development, and learn from the newsrooms that are implementing them.

📮In this week’s newsletter, we bring you the main learnings from the Virtual Newsroom Visit to Vlast.kz, an independent analytical media organization from Kazakhstan.

Vlast is a team of 14 passionate media professionals and a cat named Dexter 🐱 Special thanks to the team hosting IPI during the Virtual Visit:  Vyacheslav Abramov (Founder and CEO), Vladislav Son (Publisher) and Paolo Sorbello (Editor).

📺 Watch the Recording

The challenge: Building an independent local newsroom with a global impact

In 2012, when Vlast was founded, Kazakhstan was at the peak and the darkest era of the former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, characterised by an increasingly dangerous environment for media and journalists. At the same time, the team was driven by a clear gap in the media industry. The outlets doing independent reporting on the country were few and foreign.

“We wanted to do something local. We wanted to do something for the Kazakh audience. We wanted to do something to show the way we understand the journalism”, said Vyacheslav Abramov. 

Ever since, Vlast has covered politics, economics, and social issues in Kazakh, Russian, and English, underlying the importance of expanding its audiences and promoting fair access to quality reporting in the local language.

Despite Kazakhstan’s ranking of 142 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ freedom of speech index, Vlast continues to publish impactful news, analysis and special projects amidst challenges such as state control, censorship, and limited funding. The team, consisting of 14+ members, relies heavily on donor support and reader contributions.

The solution: constant experimentation & impactful partnerships

“They call all Independent media in Kazakhstan oppositional media,”  said Abramov about their experience in approaching advertisers, experts, funders and companies to collaborate with.

Although, as the team reflects, doing journalism as a business is rather a naive endeavour in the country right now, Vlast is continuously looking for new ways of sustaining their work, outside of donor funding and transforming the media industry in the country.

  •  Trying out many models:  From donations, subscriptions, and advertisements to commercial partnerships, the team is quick to adopt new ways of diversifying their revenue. For example, before the 2020 Pandemic, Vlast launched Vlast Offline, a hugely successful Journalism Festival in Almaty.
  •  Experimenting with formats:  Vlast is producing news, long-reads, investigations, documentaries and what they call “big stories”, which help reach the audiences in the often forgotten communities and regions in the country.
  •  Finding foreign partners & donors:  the team has looked outside to both increase the impacts of their reporting and diversify the media’s revenue. Working with OCCRP and ICIJ has been an important opportunity to leverage the local journalistic capacities of Vlast

 >> 📺 Watch the full event to hear more 

Innovation Deck

We are hiring: IPI’s Media Innovation Projects Manager

Join our team in Vienna! The International Press Institute (IPI) is looking for a talented, detail-oriented and strategically minded project manager to join a growing team supporting the delivery of media innovation and sustainability activities around the world. This exciting opportunity combines network building, training design, innovation facilitation, media advisory, project management, and communications functions.

This position comes as we bolster our investment in media innovation, extending activities such as our accelerator programmes, Media Innovation Festivals and other forms of support for local news, startup media and established media as they innovate, grow and become sustainable.

Other opportunities:

Apply in February 2025

Share your thoughts, reach out to the Media Innovation team and help us shape our media support programmes! Say hi – [email protected].