“A year ago people were worried that losing our FM radio frequency would be a big problem. But we’re working around it,” says Kenan Aliyev, the director of RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service Radio Azadliq. He waves a copy of “F?rqli dü?ünc?”, a newspaper that’s being distributed weekly in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku and around the country. “Who says the newspaper is dead? It’s not!”
In January 2009, The Azeri government banned all international broadcasters, including RFE/RL, VOA, and BBC, from the national airwaves. This posed a challenge to Kenan and his colleagues: “Our listeners were used to listen to us on FM radio. When the frequency was shut down, many of them lost touch with our station,” he says. “So we had the idea to get our content published in a locally produced newspaper.”
F?rqli dü?ünc?, which translates as “think differently” (Radio Azadliq’s main slogan), is a joint project between Radio Azadliq, the local branch of the international NGO IREX, and a local publishing house. Since December last year, 10,000 copies of the paper are being distributed weekly in Baku and regionally.
“Our main goal is (more…)
