Moldova Matters adds a "Culture" Section

September 27, 2023

Hello Moldova Matters readers! I’m writing today to share some exciting news about the newsletter. We’ve been working hard at finding ways to diversify our content and contributors in order to better serve our readers and share more about life in this small but very important country. Over time we’ve had requests from readers for content that goes beyond just news and analysis and dives deeper into what life is like in Moldova outside of politics. Today we’re launching a new section of the newsletter on Moldovan Culture and life.

To do this, we’ve partnered with a new project called Journo Birds and we’ll be sharing their great articles with our readers. Here’s a quick introduction to the Journo Birds and what they will be writing about:

What's Moldova like through the eyes of a foreigner?

Estonian journalists and a local explorer travel across the country to find what makes Moldova special. A new project, powered by the Western NIS Enterprise Fund, sheds light on various Moldovan stories nationwide and publishes them in the form of videos and texts in English.

As a freelance journalist, now nested in Moldova, Marian Männi covers science and Moldova for Estonian media. She has worked as an investigative and feature journalist for various English and Estonian media. Her colleague Tiina Kaukvere, with over a decade of experience in journalism, joins her and brings a fresh look from the outside. A local storyteller Tatiana Namashco comes with her experience in IT and a passion for travel and arts.

For one year, they will publish three longer videos and written stories monthly and many short forms throughout the week.

Find us with @journobirds on all the platforms.

Team Journo Birds

Adding articles about Culture and our collaboration with Journo Birds is just a first step in what we hope will be a series of new announcements in the next few months. In order to prepare for this we’ve made some structural changes to the Sections that organize the Moldova Matters website. In particular, we’ve condensed our previous Sections into the following 2 primary ones:

1. News: This section will contain the Weekly Roundups and Quick Hit articles

2. Analysis: This section will contain Explainers and Deep Dives

For those of you reading this by email, you won’t likely notice any changes at all. Articles under Weekly Roundup, Quick Hit, Explainers and Deep Dives will continue just as before.

The reason for the reorganization is to more clearly identify content as either News, Analysis or Culture. By default you get emails from all of our sections, but if you want to opt out of one you can set your email preferences at this link.

Going forward we’ll have a new article in the Culture section more or less weekly. Our publishing schedule for other content won’t change. We hope you enjoy these contributions from Journo Birds! Your first Culture article will be in your inbox later today.