“Stories of Value Will Find Their Way”
Can journalism still change lives today? Where does the beauty of slow journalism lie? How can meaningful projects be built in our unappealing media landscape? We meet Alexander Nikolov and Dimitar Panayotov, the authors of The Last Gift of Man, to talk about the present and future of journalism.
22The Last Gift and the Magi
On the eve of the holidays, we instinctively want to steer clear of uncomfortable subjects. Sometimes, though, the holidays are exactly the right moment to face them. The Last Gift of Man is a stunning multimedia project by two exceptionally talented young journalists: a deep, personal and professionally told story worth hearing, reading and feeling right now…
23“Today, Everyone Online Lies However They Please”
We meet Vu Nguyen—Vunyo, to his friends—again to chat about the present and future of journalism, about technology, and about the challenges and the bright sides of life in Bulgaria. A former journalist at The New York Times and a top-level IT specialist in the US, he and his wife decided to move back to Bulgaria after their son started calling the laptop “grandma”; he then won hearts on the Bulgarian edition of MasterChef and ran his own restaurant for a while. Today he is back in the world of information technology, but now here at home.
24When Not!News Makes the News
Few pages on the Bulgarian web offer original, unadulterated content that makes you laugh… even if the smile is a sour one, born of the irony of Bulgarian reality. Since 2009, Samuil Petkanov, the creator of Not!News, has been serving up his version of “the news as it could have been.” What does he think of the way we get our information? Does he manage to predict the future? How is it that we are all experts on influencers’ nose jobs and cryptocurrency fluctuations, and where is this taking us? The answers are in this interview, garnished with a small helping of Not!News inspired by Digital Stories.
25“Empathy Will Save the World”
Kris is the strongest person I know. This time we talk about literature and the media, two of the most important universes in his life. About the obstacles people with disabilities face and their encounter with society. And about how the rest of us should treat them without offending or hurting them.
26Did the Mouse Eat the Book? Or Just the Newspaper…
“Will the mouse eat the book?” we asked at the beginning of the 21st century. Two decades later, we check whether that really happened. Did books lose the battle with the internet? Was there ever such a battle at all? And what happened to the print media in the meantime? We look for answers in the numbers from the database of Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute.
27“We Will Always Need Quality, Verified Information”
Diana Kulchitskaya teaches journalism at Moscow State University. What makes people take up journalism? Does it have a future, as seen from the lecturer's desk? And how do the debates about the online future of the media look from the “more northeastern corner” of the globe?
28Truth or Dare?
Where did the professions whose job is to create content for an audience begin, and where have they ended up? Who still fights for the truth, and should that matter to us today? Where did influencers come from, and why is it important to understand their place at the end of this long chain of professions?
29Inside the Bubble of the Like-Minded
All the big websites look after us almost like parents: they pick the most suitable content for us and save us time and effort. But this is turning into a serious problem for society. The filter bubble makes us more closed to other opinions and more aggressive, drags many of our ugliest traits into the spotlight, and robs us of the nuance and beauty of communication.
30News or Blame? The Robot in the Newsroom
Every day we already read articles written by a robot. Today the most valuable resource isn’t oil, or money. It isn’t gold, it isn’t even power. At the epicenter of the computer revolution, everything is information. Zdravko wants to be a journalist; Zhelyazko is an artificial intelligence. Who does the future belong to?
