Maria Sadovskaya will take part in a panel at the World Press Freedom Day in May.

Sadovskaya, currently a graduate journalism student at Columbia University in New York, will tell the story of European Radio for Belarus, an FM, satellite and web radio which started in an apartment in Warsaw, Poland in 2006. She'll be part of a breakout session focusing on digital natives held May 2.

As part of our ongoing profile series leading up to World Press Freedom Day, IJNet spoke to her about how young people in her home country use and consume news now.

IJNet: How many young people in Belarus are active online? Is the Internet available and affordable in your home country?

Sadovskaya: Belarusian youngsters actively use blogs, especially Livejournal, which has 80,000 registered Belarusian blogs and social networks. More than 300,000 people use Facebook. Almost the same number use its Russian clone Vkontakte. The number of Twitter users is growing and has reached 17,000.

The national statistics office states that 31.8 percent of Belarusians are active web users and around half of them go online daily. According to recent data from Gemius, (a company that tracks Internet usage in Central and Eastern Europe), Belarus has the lowest penetration of broadband Central and Eastern Europe, less than 10 percent, but at the same time, the youngest online audience – 67 percent of users are aged 15 to 34.

While broadband is not widely accessible and is often based on a pay-by-traffic scheme, the alternative ways of access to the web are DSL, mobile Internet, Wi-Fi, and the slowest and the oldest one, dial-up.

IJNet: What are the advantages and disadvantages of new media in Belarus?

Sadovskaya: Using new media targeting the young audience is definitely an advantage in Belarus. Youth are the most dynamic part of the population, open to challenges and to the world. Since broadband traffic in Belarus is often expensive, you need to present your product in the way that young people are happy to pay for. This seriously raises the quality threshold.

At the same time, young people are active co-creators of online multimedia content and they are important contributors to our daily wire via their feedback on social networks, in comments and in blogs.

Just like the rest of the world, the future of traditional media in Belarus depends on how well they engage with their growing web audience, even in cases when this audience does not represent the majority of their readers, viewers or listeners.

IJNet: Which technologies help online journalists present information better?

Sadovskaya: The technological side of online journalism becomes easier every day. A successful media site can be run on open source platforms such as Drupal or even WordPress. Even cheap cameras present a fairly good quality of shooting for the web and the quality of mobile phones is satisfactory enough to send live reports from street protests and other important events.

IJNet: What topics interest your listeners most?

Sadovskaya: Euroradio started in 2006 as a youth-oriented radio channel that later grew into a wider multimedia platform. Young people are the most targeted by authorities and the least targeted by independent Belarusian media. Since 2003, the government has introduced state ideology as a subject at schools and universities and it also supports several youth-oriented media to attract younger generations.

When Euroradio launched in Poland (because the radio would not have been able to get a license in Belarus), there were several broadcasters focusing on Belarus from abroad, but all of them were using outdated channels, such as short or medium waves with limited Web services and using mostly talk radio formats.

The importance of such broadcasters should not be underestimated, but the young audience in Belarus, as all over the world, would prefer to listen to music and be entertained. Euroradio decided to experiment with the format of a CHR/Rock station (contemporary hit radio), with 70 percent music and 30 percent text.

The format of Euroradio has not significantly changed since then, but the informational part became stronger over time and more relevant to the growing audience.

Programs, such as the daily evening show “Eurozoom” bring up serious topics of political and economic life, but also touch upon purely “youth” themes, such as student life, young professionals’ choices, travel and work abroad, concerts and new exhibits, etc.

IJNet: How do you cover topics relevant to Belarus while broadcasting from abroad?

Sadovskaya: Euroradio now has a bureau in Belarus that has accreditation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Most of its news is prepared by reporters in Minsk and Belarusian regions and later produced and presented by DJs and newsreaders from Warsaw, from where the live broadcasts air...

IJNet: How do you keep in touch with your online audience and citizen journalists?

Sadovskaya: The main challenge for the station is getting feedback. While 87 percent of our audience is using something other than web channels to listen to us, we get our feedback mostly online.

We are also trying to get the opinion of less web active young people through focus groups and analyzing data from sociological research.

IJNet: How difficult is it to stay current with the needs and interests of young people?

Sadovskaya: The main challenge is to be up to date with youth trends and, where possible, be a trendsetter. Euroradio has co-organizes a rock festival “Be Free” held on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border that attracted thousands of Belarusian young people. We are present at all possible youth activities and concerts inside Belarus. We’re blogging and tweeting and encourage feedback, often re-posting things that the younger generation would consider “cute,” even if sometimes this would not be understandable to older people. We also make sure we always have students on internships to make ourselves not too outdated and to transfer skills to the newer generation.

IJNet: How important is it to broadcast in the Belorusian language?

Sadovskaya: The Belarusian language is cool and modern – this is at least how many young people consider it in Belarus. More and more Western companies realize this and order localized Belarusian-language versions of their ads. Since Belarusian official media space is overcrowded by Russian-language channels, we are offering Belarusian language as a sign of difference and “European quality,” and our audience appreciates that.

IJNet: What journalism training do Belarusian journalists need? Is it available?

Sadovskaya: I think that journalist training is very important, as well as courses that improve online editing and web promotion. Belarusian journalists need to understand the importance of web presence, including in social media, better. At the same time, traditional forms of training also needed...

IJNet: Has your channel ever had any trouble with the authorities?

Sadovskaya: Our equipment in Minsk has been confiscated twice and our editors have been interrogated since the presidential elections.

IJNet: Do you plan to teach journalism in the future?

Sadovskaya: I would like to be able to teach journalism in Belarus, in a system of education free of ideological control by any political force. I will do what I can, meanwhile, to share with my colleagues the knowledge and experience that I got while doing my master’s degree at Columbia University.