Free Media Awards 2018 - Conference in Yerevan

October 2 2018

The 2018 Free Media Awards will be bestowed at the Free Media Awards conference in Yerevan, Armenia under the auspices of Fritt Ord and ZEIT-Stiftung, on Tuesday 2 October 2018.

The awards go to:

  • Chai Khana in South-Caucasus for their efforts to bring attention to under-reported news stories spanning national borders in the region
  • Fontanka in Russia for their coverage of ongoing and forgotten conflicts
  • The Belarusian website Belarus Partisan for their tireless investigative work, also following the murder of their editor-in-chief in 2016.

Read more about the laureates here.

The conference is free and open to the public.

Venue: The Opera Suite Hotel, Mozart Hall
Address: 1 Baghramyan Street 1, 3, 0019 Yerevan, Armenia

PROGRAMME


9.15 – 9.30: Welcome

Dr. Knut Olav Åmås, Executive Director, The Fritt Ord Foundation

Prof. Dr. Michael Göring, Chairman of the Board of Directors, ZEIT-Stiftung

Panel I: 9.30 – 10.45: Media entrepreneurship and failure as opportunity

Free Media Awards 2018: Chai Khana

Panel participants:

Caroline Sutcliffe, founder and director of Chai Khana, Tbilisi, Georgia –South Caucasus

Jura Manvelyan, editor of Epress.am, Yerevan (Epress.am received the award in 2014). A view from Armenia.

Monica Ellena, editor of Chai Khana, Tbilisi, Georgia – South Caucasus

Moderator: Silvia Stöber, freelance journalist specialized for more than ten years on development in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia for the German public broadcaster ARD and other media, and a jurymember for the Free Media Awards.

Panel II: 10.55 – 12.10: 20 years of media crackdown

Free Media Awards 2018: Belarus Partisan

Panel participants

Svetlana Kalinkina, editor, Belarusian Partisan, Minsk, Belarus

Zaruhi Mejlumyan, former journalist and head of the information block in the State Supervision Service, Jerevan, Armenia (she received the award in 2017). A view from Armenia.

Juri Durkot, journalist and translator, Lviv, Ukraine, and a jury member for the Free Media Awards. A view from Ukraine.

Moderator: Martin Paulsen, Eastern Europe expert with a PhD in Russian language from the University of Bergen, and a jury member for the Free Media Awards.

12.15: Lunch at the hotel

Panel III: 14.00 – 15.15: Rules for successful independent media in modern Russia

The Free Media Awards 2018: Fontanka

Panel participants:

Alexsander Gorshkov, editor-in-chief of Fontanka.ru, St. Petersburg, Russia

Marianna Grigoryan, director and editor-in-chief of MediaLab Newsroom-Laboratory, Jerevan, Armenia (she received the award in 2009). A view from Armenia.

Guri Norstrøm, Europe correspondent for NRK (The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation), Berlin, Germany, and a jury member for the Free Media Awards. A view from Germany/Norway/Central Europe.

Moderator: Alice Bota, Moscow correspondent for the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, and a jury member for the Free Media Awards.

News

Eirin Larsen and Hadia Tajik join the Fritt Ord Board

August 5 2025

Eirin Larsen (36) and Hadia Tajik (42) bring valuable experience from journalism, technology, politics and jurisprudence to the Fritt Ord Board.

Making the film «Farouk» – on the geologist that secured Norway its oil

July 1 2025

Geologist Farouk Al-Kasim joined the the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in 1968, shaping Norwegian petroleum resource management for decades afterwards. Now, documentary film director Halkawt Mustafa and producer Janne Hjeltnes are making a film about Al-Kasim’s life and reflections.
“Farouk tells me something in this film that he has not talked about before, because he has always told the version he feels Norway wanted to hear,” recounts Mustafa, who has Iraqi roots himself.

Read the interview with the director and see the list of grants awarded by Fritt Ord in June 2025.

Bård Vegar Solhjell new chair of the Fritt Ord Board

July 1 2025

Bård Vegar Solhjell (53) has taken over as the new chair of the Fritt Ord Foundation Board.

Cultural newspaper TBATBA.no and new journalism grants – June 2025

June 19 2025

– Cultural journalism is under pressure. Part of the problem is media outlets failing to cover culture in formats and ways that appeal to people under 30, says Ida Madsen Hestman, editor, freelance critic, and founder of TBATBA.no. Last year, she started the kind of publication she herself would want to read.

The magazine TBA is among those awarded funding in June 2025. See the full list of grants in Norsk Journalistikk.