Collecting appeals online and at newspaper sales points: how Visnyk Polissia manages to expand communication within the community

In May, the Visnyk Polissia newspaper implemented a project called Regional Mass Media – A Platform for Communication Between Authorities and Community in the Varash District. The project was aimed at activating communication in the community. As a result, the newsroom has significantly added topics, and the audience has grown.

“We installed boxes for collecting appeals at 20 newspaper sales points in Volodymyrets and developed a Google form for appeals on the Volodymyrets.City website. Besides, we filed an appeal in the printed weekly publication Visnyk Polissia. In May, 21 appeals were received,” says the acting director of Volodymyretsky Visnyk LLC, Liudmyla Bosyk. “Residents of the Varash District and other districts and even regions were among applicants. Issues for further resolution have been raised before the heads of institutions. The main requests were to repair roads, provide access to the authorities, inform residents about the activities of the authorities, the quality of social services, support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine by the authorities, lack of leisure time for children in the villages of the community.”

By the way, residents of Volodymyrets voiced the problem of accessing the Internet due to power outages. The editors organized four spots of free access and informed about it on their resources. Therefore, 2-6 people come to the co-working space of the newsroom every day.

Communication with the community gave results; for example, the number of Telegram channel subscribers increased by 25%.

Besides, the number of topics increased. Thanks to the reader’s appeal, the problem of landfills in the Volodymyrets territorial community was raised. The editors organized a meeting of residents of the village of Dovhovolia on June 14 with representatives of the authorities. Because of the power outage schedules in the Varash District, there were complaints to the newsroom about the lack of information about the power outage schedules. The newsroom has launched prompt publication of schedules on its own resources. There were also other topics that readers wrote about, such as mobilization issues, benefits for military personnel, and legal consultations. In general, the editorial team has created a lot of relevant materials with photos, videos for the newspaper and digital resources of the newsroom, which reveal the identified problems and offer solutions.

“We attracted 365 new subscribers and 167 new subscribers to the Telegram channel; subscribers were also added to the editorial YouTube channel. We do not abandon the raised topics; we continue to monitor their development,” says Liudmyla Bosyk.

Over the course of two months, 21 local and regional media, on the initiative of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), will implement their own projects aimed at strengthening interaction with the audience and communities of local communities. Within the framework of work on projects, editorial offices receive assistance from the Ukrainian Media Fund with the assistance of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. TV and radio companies, online media and print publications will participate in the project.

Nazarii Vivcharyk