Best Of RFE/RL: October
Each month RFE/RL’s Editorial Board celebrates the greatest journalistic achievements in breaking news coverage, reporting, features, videos, and photography within its 25 Language Services. Below are the winners for October, 2017.
News & current affairs
Coverage Of Kyrgyz Presidential Election
With 11 hours of online live video from all regions of the country, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey, alongside live studio discussions, text, audio, and photo reports, the Kyrgyz Service attracted over 120,000 website visits in just one day. Live coverage of Kyrgyz labor migrants in Russia denied voting rights was widely quoted by media and actively discussed on social networks.
Feature long
Unemployment In The Occupied Territories Of Eastern Ukraine
RFE/RL’s Donbas.Realities gave a voice to citizens trapped in occupied Alchevsk and Gorlovka in eastern Ukraine, who are losing their jobs and facing hardship. The team communicated directly with local residents to hear their opinion and shed light on what the pro-Russia regime wants to hide: their failure and the misery and anger of the people.
Feature short
A Kosovar Mother's Museum Of Lost Sons
Local TV stations in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia shared RFE/RL’s Balkan Service’s video which was watched over 70 thousand times. In Serbia specifically, it provided a dialogue between those who deny Serbia's wrongdoings during the Kosovo war and those who want each and every person held accountable, regardless of their ethnicity.
Feature short
‘Left To Die As Guinea Pigs’: Tatar Village Struggles On, 60 Years After Nuclear Catastrophe
RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir service’s recount of a wide range of stories about villagers in the Chelyabinsk Oblast, who are still struggling for official recognition of their plight following the 1957 nuclear disaster, was widely shared in social networks.
Special project
Ukraine’s War Wounds
RFE/RL’s Ukraine Service’s poignant account of what life is like now along the front line in Donbas as the fourth year of conflict in eastern Ukraine drags on was the most popular piece on the English website for several days. It will compete for the Overseas Press Association Kim Wall Digital Journalism Award.
Text/Audio
We’ve Got 12 Coffins In One Day
RFE/RL’s Russian Service’s stories on two Russian mercenaries who were captured by ISIS forces and allegedly killed received over 160,000 reads and were cited in all independent mainstream Russian media as well as some foreign media. A woman who personally knew the second prisoner phoned RFE/RL with more valuable information on his story and the topic.