Police raid on Taksim Gezi Park triggers night of rioting, July 2013. ABACA ABACA/Press Association. All rights reserved.“The circumstances in Turkey could not be better for the creation of a news start-up. Here, we have the challenge of developing new models of reporting in a tense political context”, says Engin Önder, one of the founders of “140journos”. Engin and his team do not employ any journalists, and they don´t need press cards or permissions to report. All of the information they use is provided by their readers. Anyone who has a smartphone can message news to the 140journos team via WhatsApp and Twitter.
The idea was born four and a half years ago, after a Turkish military attack killed several civilians and the media remained silent. Users began taking things into their own hands, and reporting over the Twitter account, “140journos”. They soon had several million followers.
Now, over 500 people message news to them on a regular basis. Journalists use the portal to publicize news that would otherwise be censored. The Twitter statistics are enough to demonstrate the concept’s success: a year ago, the start-up´s news was shared two million times a month on twitter. Now, 140journos has reached a monthly rate of around 50 million Twitter impressions.
