Why we launched Dron Media, a new publication for the Russian-speaking world

Editor’s note: In early June 2022 the multinational team of journalists and media managers launched a Russian-language Dron Media with a focus on explanatory journalism. In this op-ed, Gaygysyz Geldiyev, the publisher of this newly created media, explains why he believes there is a need for another Russian-language media on the market and what reader pains it is aimed to solve.

Disclosure: Dron Media was launched by Jnomics Media, an international media consultancy. Several Jnomics’ leaders are also co-founders and editors of The Fix.

In the aftermath of February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine, many of us realised once again that the Kremlin’s propaganda is still powerful and can produce extreme evils.

Plenty of media looked for ways to counter propaganda; some ended up launching new explanatory products.

While discussing the problem with my colleagues from other countries, I realised that the problem is not limited to the Russian media space, it has spin-off manifestations across the region. 

Since the Soviet Union, the Russian language has been a lingua franca for the populations of former USSR states. Rew regional media outlets would equally report on the situation in different countries where Russian is spoken. Thus, Russian media, often state-owned or state-controlled, are a natural option for people here to learn what’s happening beyond their countries. That is how these audiences have found themselves easy targets of Russian propaganda.

So we thought – if Russians are using the wide reach of the Russian language, why cannot we use it to our means? 

When it is unclear for ordinary readers what is really happening, with propaganda and info wars making things even worse, only providing a bigger picture for a story can help.

Dron Media is a multinational Russian-speaking media with a focus on the former Soviet Union region. Our mission is to provide Russian-speakers around the world with reliable, fact-based information. We plan to achieve our mission by explaining main events and trends with the “so-what”, “what happens next” and “what does it mean for me personally” approach.

The project team brings together journalists from Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries. We consider multinationality our main advantage. It allows the editors, on the one hand, to understand national agendas, and on the other hand, to write about the region from a global perspective, highlighting the main thing but not missing important nuances.

Dron Media was launched in the middle of June. It is accessible on the website and on social media platforms popular in the Russian-language segment – Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Viber, Odnoklassniki and VK. 

We deliberately decided to work on the platforms effectively controlled by Russian governments and affiliates (Odnoklassniki and VK). For us the short- and medium-term incentives of reaching more diverse audiences residing on these platforms are higher than risks of being banned from them. 

Currently we are working with four main formats – explainers, news, digests and interviews with agenda makers.

At the first phase our target audiences are Russian-speaking males and females with a university degree, 25-55 years old, living in urbanised areas in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Later this year we plan to scale our content offering to Caucasus and Central Asia. 

From the beginning, we saw that it is difficult to do a cold start of the explanatory media project with almost zero brand awareness. 

Therefore, we decided to inject news reporting with explanatory elements in order to rely on search traffic and social media platforms algorithms to build a loyal audience base.

It is a temporary solution, but it already gives us an opportunity to test our MVP – readers are sharing their feedback, which helps us plan to refine editorial formats and frequency of publication.  

We invest a lot of effort in distribution practices to promote our content, as the audience base is only being created. We use a plethora of tools – starting from content partnerships with other media and Telegram channels in three target markets (where we occasionally exchange content and even prepare specific content pieces which can be interesting for the partners) to posting articles URLs in Russian-language social question-and-answer websites. 

The project has been self-funded by co-founders of Jnomics Media consultancy so far. Initial investments covered website development and core team staffing. Dron Media is interesting for philanthropy and donors because of its visible mission – we are currently in negotiations with several potential donors who can support our vision. 

Even though external financing would increase the planning horizon and team capacities, we are realistic and we understand that we must achieve limited proof of concept for our venture. That is why we consider the next 2-3 months to be crucial for solidifying the audience core and building regular relations with it.

We also launched a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe so everyone who believes in the importance of our mission can support us with individual contributions. As of now our target is 10,000 GBP that we need for additional work force and website back-end and front-end updates. 

We have two more content formats in the pipeline for the next 3-4 months – human stories to inspire readers and share valuable experiences and video stories optimised for social networks.

The team also has ambitious plans for content partnerships, which we consider an integral part of our work. We want to shift from mere content exchange to more sophisticated cooperation – e.g. joint explanatory content creation. We believe this approach can benefit both us and our partners from cost-sharing and expertise-sharing as most explanatory formats are comparably more resource-intensive than general news.