In the second year of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, international and Ukrainian experts, as well as the entire media community, still perceive the media as a means to inform society about r...
Lera Lauda
Lera Lauda is head of the Ukrainian Local Media Development Agency ABO (Kyiv, Ukraine). The mission of her organization is to relaunch the local and niche media market by digitizing it, raising the professional level of journalists, and optimizing the business models.
ABO has launched and is developing 60 media outlets in small and medium-sized towns across Ukraine with a total monthly audience of over 3.6 million users. Also, the organization is actively developing its own seven thematic media outlets, including: media for Ukrainians who have evacuated abroad; a project that documents the stories of Ukrainians whose homes and businesses were destroyed due to the war; the Memorial platform, which verifies and shares stories about civilians and military personnel whose lives were affected by Russia's war against Ukraine. This platform also disseminates information to international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Every Casualty Counts.
All of these media outlets operate on the content management platform The City, which was developed by ABO in 2017.
In 2022 ABO received the international media award IPI-IMS Free Media Pioneer for its impact on the development of Ukrainian journalism in the conditions of war, resilience, and adaptation to new realities.
Events IJF 2024
You’re under attack. Your country is at war. Your community needs your reporting now more than ever. How do you pivot to ensure you can continue to serve the information they need? Three editors and...
