Radio21, a popular independent station in Pristina, is poised to broadcast its news 24 hours a day on the Web by this fall. Given the tens of thousands of Albanians around the world, the station thinks a market exists. By trying to keep those who live abroad more informed of what is happening at home, she hopes to encourage many to return, or at least to invest funds in the new Kosovo. More than 30 journalists from seven newspaper and broadcast outlets crowded into a hot room filled with sleek new laptops, provided by European governments that are investing heavily in Kosovo's reconstruction. Since telephone lines are unreliable, newsrooms are commonly plugged into high-speed LAN servers via satellite.
Many journalists have the latest desktop computers and browsers.
Many of the ethnic Albanian journalists were disturbed during our Web training courses when I showed them critical reports about their own people. At a site run by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the reporters were conversely surprised to read about Serb journalists imprisoned for exposing atrocities committed by Milosevic's troops. But some of the younger journalists also had things to teach me. Ilire Zajmi covers security issues for the main television network, and uses the Web to get different sides of the story. At 28, Ilire Zajmi has seen more war and destruction than most veteran journalists have.