One of the best decisions we ever made was not to buy that Corvette during our 1993 midlife crisis but rather to quit jobs, pull our kid, Kevin, out of his junior year of high school and head to Albania to work for the German Marshall Fund. Suzi worked with the Albanian Helsinki Committee, human rights advocates. I tried to convert Radio Tirana from a state broadcaster to a public broadcaster, with a degree of independence from the government. Suzi was probably more successful as a Hunan Rights Advocate than I was in turning state radio to public. But I did initiate some good programming and trained some good people. We were successful enough to be invited back, me as Fullbright Professor in Journalism and Suzi to the Tirana University English Faculty. From there we both went on to the USAID funded ProMedia program, run by IREX. That led us to media development projects from the Russian Far East to Morocco.
The experience changed us. We learned far more than we taught and Kevin got a whole new perspective on life. For us it was a good decision, but was it a good investment by the various organizations that funded our projects?
We came away from this trip with the strong feeling it was. If you read my last post, “Backsliding Democracy” you might draw a different conclusion. But reflecting on our trip while riding home on Alaska Airlines’ Southeast Milk Run (It always starts and ends with the Milk Run) I was happy that several institutions we worked with.
ANEM, Memo98, the Slovak and Albanian Media Institutes, the Serbian Radio Advertising Bureau, The Slovak newspaper Audit Bureau of Circulation, the Belgrade Daily Paper Danas and several radio stations, especially Naxi Radio in Belgrade, were still going. Naxi has developed a network that provides inspiration and programming, as well as revenue, to local stations that empower local voices. Local online news portals have sprung from an IREX initiative to help media outlets with web design, content management and training.
While B92, a major focus of our program, is no longer a beacon of Serbian independent journalism, the investigative shot Insajder, founded by a B92 journalist, has spun off and runs cable and YouTube news channels. IREX provided training, financial and logistical support for the Balkan Investigative Reporters’ Network, still working throughout the region.
IREX did not start any of these organizations. But we helped them survive through the difficult transition after the collapse of Communism and during the Balkan wars of secession. Our capacity building program helped them to adjust and grow afterward. And our work, I believe, helped Serbia bring down Slobodan Milosevic and, perhaps, prevent another Yugoslav war in Montenegro.
But our most important work was the people we mentored or trained. The first commercial station in Albania was born on the balcony of our flat. Many of the region’s best producers were inspired by our workshops and summer schools. One Albanian friend said that it wasn’t the skills we taught as much as our showing him a different way of looking at the world. Another friend said we showed him that hope was a possibility. We created deep friendships that endure. Suzi and I learned courage and tenacity from colleagues who were turning around countries that had been caught in a soul deadening Communist system that had rotted from inside and yet they came out whole. We are forever grateful.
