Orient Express Reporter 2010/11: citizen journalism’s ‘corridor no.10’ in Balkans and Turkey

For nine months, this citizen media has been sending an editor from its team of six in Paris along with volunteer teams of journalists to the likes of Bosnia, Macedonia and the EU’s 28th member state as of July 2013, Croatia. A project initially born of idealism in the winter – the aim being to present ‘our Balkan neighbours’ from an on-the-ground, positive viewpoint – the monthly city missions became a veritable bastion of shared and unshared realities throughout the year (travel in the Balkans, football fever), even when some well-meaning articles inevitably dipped into the usual shadows of already mediatised topics. Politics decides the status of a Balkan member state in relation to the EU, and politics is unavoidable in the daily lives of young people. In December 2010, Montenegro and Albania respectively garnered ‘EU candidate’ status and celebrated visa-free access to the EU’s Schengen zone. Their journalists and Arab-revolutionary wannabes dream whilst in Kosovo, a Spaniard (whose homeland has not recognised the ‘world’s second newest country’) has a one-on-one with the prime minister. As Irishwoman simply tries to understand Serbia, which is racing ahead in its EU prospects after ‘handing over old war criminals’, whereas from Turkey, whose negotiations to join the EU seem stalled, the scene is set by a passionate cult of football supporters in Istanbul. And that was the key to this year’s editorial mission: passion. Read the best of cafebabel.com’s jaunt in the east and south-east (Image: (cc) Ezequiel Scagnetti for Orient Express Reporter Kosovo/ ezequiel-scagnetti.com/)