The mobile newsrooms restoring citizens’ faith in journalism

The Investigative Reporting Lab has set up multiple successful mobile newsrooms across North Macedonia in areas that had become news deserts, with little or no quality local media, and has been inundated with requests from residents asking their team to come and investigate crime and corruption in their area.

The lakeside location, historic churches and pretty cobbled streets of Ohrid in North Macedonia draw hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

But the city’s status as a UNESCO-protected gem has not defended it from rampant overdevelopment and corruption.

When notorious local politician and businessman Nefi Useini began to illegally build a pizzeria near an ancient plane tree and assaulted a building inspector visiting the site, a pioneering group of North Macedonian journalists decided it was time to act.

The entire 10-strong team of reporters, editors and video producers from the Investigative Reporting Lab (IRL), an OCCRP member center normally based in the capital Skopje, decamped to Ohrid for two weeks and set up what they called a “mobile newsroom.”

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