(Russia)
Deputy editor-in-chief of
the multimedia portal Russia Beyond
the multimedia portal Russia Beyond
«Russia Beyond» is the world's most popular digital media about Russia which is available on 14 languages. Today «Russia Beyond» boasts 5 million unique views of video and 1,5 million transitions to the site per month.
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Young journalists attended master class of Gleb Fedorov that was held at the General Staff Building
Media-Forum participants had a great opportunity to improve their skills in the working with video content. Gleb Fyodorov conducted a master class for Russian and foreign journalists, photographers and documentalists and shared some tips which might be useful for work on creative video projects.
Gleb also answered all the questions from the audience:
Gleb also answered all the questions from the audience:
— This morning we were talking about bloggers and people who use technologies and there was a statement that they can't be called journalists. We compared them with street musicians. Do you consider yourself a journalist or a blogger?
— When I heard this I was thinking a lot. I would say, I don't know who I am. This topic doesn't seem very serious but nowadays audience speaks another language, they get information from different sources. And the task of those who work in media sphere is to tell stories so that your audience could hear you. Technologies allow you to understand as accurately as possible who your audience is. Sometimes good audience is just 90 people, sometimes it is a million. In both cases it's a successful media. Nowadays the boundary is being eradicating. We learn from those who doesn't have a journalist diploma and those who does learn from us as well. Earlier it was possible to become famous on YouTube with a simple video. Now the quality has to be higher. The picture is comparable to the television and those who were associated to the television try new formats. Everybody watches «Parthenon» and «VDud».
— When I heard this I was thinking a lot. I would say, I don't know who I am. This topic doesn't seem very serious but nowadays audience speaks another language, they get information from different sources. And the task of those who work in media sphere is to tell stories so that your audience could hear you. Technologies allow you to understand as accurately as possible who your audience is. Sometimes good audience is just 90 people, sometimes it is a million. In both cases it's a successful media. Nowadays the boundary is being eradicating. We learn from those who doesn't have a journalist diploma and those who does learn from us as well. Earlier it was possible to become famous on YouTube with a simple video. Now the quality has to be higher. The picture is comparable to the television and those who were associated to the television try new formats. Everybody watches «Parthenon» and «VDud».
— Do you ever make jokes of politics? Aren't you afraid of some laws or breach of the sanctity of religion? How not to go to jail in Russia?
— We try to nake jokes of simple things. We don't write about politics or economics. Sometimes we use things related to politics like a video with Putin with animals. It is not a straight joke, it is a game of positive emotions. I do not know how not to go to jail. You should probably check the jokes in the editorial and learn the legislation.
— We try to nake jokes of simple things. We don't write about politics or economics. Sometimes we use things related to politics like a video with Putin with animals. It is not a straight joke, it is a game of positive emotions. I do not know how not to go to jail. You should probably check the jokes in the editorial and learn the legislation.
— Each person has its own sense of humor. How do you manage to maneuver between young people and older people?
— Humor is a very difficult thing and I can't say that we always make it stick. We present different topics in different ways. There are thousands of definition of humor. Moreover, each country has its own sense of humor. Many of jokes can't be translated into other languages because they require a specific context. It must always be taken into account. Before making jokes for specific audience you should study as much as possible about it. And try again and again.
— Humor is a very difficult thing and I can't say that we always make it stick. We present different topics in different ways. There are thousands of definition of humor. Moreover, each country has its own sense of humor. Many of jokes can't be translated into other languages because they require a specific context. It must always be taken into account. Before making jokes for specific audience you should study as much as possible about it. And try again and again.
It's difficult to explain in such a short time what we do. «Russia Beyond» is a young project but we have already been working for 10 years in different languages such as chineese, indonesian etc. We tell a whole world about Russia without politics or economics. And, obviously, we do our job very well because our media is the most popular media about Russia for foreigners.
5 million views of video on Facebook.. We started to work really hard after we realized that our media had faced a complicated situation. We wanted to tell people we don't know about our big, huge country. I will try to explain briefly how we deal with it.
In an era when platforms become obsolete, you just do not have time to «change shoes». This is the result of information noise which we're trying to get through. On the other side, we forget about what we shoulddo as journalists. We should tell platfom-independent stories to have strong resonance for our audience. And the best way to do this is to tell those stories which make our readers smarter, happier and make them say: «Wow, that's awesome!»
2018 was a football year for Russia!
We should have apparently told our english-, french- and other languages-speaking audience about great goalkeeper Akinfeev, but we did not. Because the real russian national team is Tolstoy, Mendeleev etc. See, you smile! It's impossible to explain with words how the humor works. But technically it was like this: a high-profile event forced us to remind our audience about Great Russians.
We tell something which don't cause emotions. People from other countries don't start morning with a thought «what should I read about Russia today?» It requires an easy approach from us. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but we still try!
Follow us, comment on, this will help us to understand which direction we should take.
Follow us, comment on, this will help us to understand which direction we should take.
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E-mail: fedorov@rbth.com