Barbara Frye

Question Asker

USA

Twenty-five years' journalism experience in the U.S. and Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Barbara Frye

Question Asker

USA

Twenty-five years' journalism experience in the U.S. and Europe, specializing in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

Could crowdfunding save journalism in partly free societies?
After the Cold War, our attempts to encourage independent media in transition states didn't have the success we hoped. Could crowdfunding be part of the answer?
openDemocracy
Detoxing Russia
Long after Boris Nemtsov’s killers are caught and Putin is gone, we’ll still be dealing with the legacy of the current media climate. Long before the gunmen pulled up in their little white car near the Kremlin, it was time to worry about the stew of paranoia and violent rhetoric that Russia’s official message-makers had been cooking up and ladling out via the country’s airwaves.
Transitions Online
Featured
Years After War in Kosovo, Land Mines Scar Albania
Seven years after the Kosovo conflict ended, NATO bombs continued to explode this fall in the mountains of northern Albania. This time, however, it was a reassuring sound. Up in the hills, men in protective gear were setting off bomblets that alliance warplanes scattered along the Kosovo border during the 78 days of hostilities.
The Washington Post
Everybody Loves Volodya
With Putin’s approval ratings sky-high, have even his critics changed their minds – or have they just found the door? Analysts in the West are making a nice living these days explaining the workings and effects of Russian propaganda, but there has seemed a consistent gap in those explanations. Yes, many Russians get their news primarily from state-controlled television, which is home to enough hokum, hucksters, and hagiographers of the ruling regime to degrade the critical faculties.
Transitions Online
Featured
In Kosovo, uneasy truce among neighbors
Ljubisa Vitosevic, a Serb, lost his elderly father days after the end of NATO's 1999 bombing campaign in Kosovo. Witnesses said he was led away by a group of Albanians, never to be seen again. "I cannot forgive the people who did that, but I'm not angry at all Albanians," says Mr. Vitosevic. Since open hostilities ended more than seven years ago, Serbs and Albanians in this breakaway province of Serbia have reached a kind of truce, albeit punctuated in 2004 by ethnic rioting.
The Christian Science Monitor
How governments bully newspapers
It was a distressing, but hardly surprising, phone call. On the line was a regular contributor to Transitions Online (the magazine I edit for). Still in shock, she was calling to tell me that she had just been put on one month's unpaid leave from her newspaper in Russia. By now, stories of dying newspapers have become familiar to readers in the United States.
The Christian Science Monitor
Playing the Wild Card in Belgrade
What does Serbia’s increasingly close link with Russia mean for its EU accession, or for the EU itself? Among the armies parading across Red Square on Victory Day next month will be Serbia’s, as their president, Tomislav Nikolic, takes his place alongside the leaders of Russia and, so far, about two dozen other countries on the reviewing stand.
Transitions Online
Intensive Care
Making the rounds with health mediators in a Romani village: birth, death, and everything in-between. DIOSIG, Romania | Kati Gurbai and Tunde Makai gingerly pick their way through ankle-deep mud until they reach the home of Argentina Kanalas. It’s a cold mid-December afternoon, but Kanalas is standing outside, clad in a thin, long-sleeve shirt and full-length skirt.
Transitions Online
A Distorted European Perspective
Many Armenians insist they are European, but they have a lot of work to do to make it a reality.
Transitions Online
Death Threats and Deadlines
The perils of being a journalist in the Balkans' "quiet" country.
Transitions Online
Featured
Reconciliation and Recriminations
As their government makes overtures to an old foe, many Armenians still wait for an apology.
Transitions Online
Buried Treasure
While politicians and diplomats debate Kosovo's status, the impoverished province's potential remains untapped.
Transitions Online

About

Barbara Frye

QuarkXpress

Photoshop

basic HTML5

Advanced French

Audacity

Soundslides

Web posting

Beginning Russian

Reporting

Assignment editing

Copy editing

I was born in a very small town to a family of very limited means. As a kid, I asked a lot of questions and got on a lot of adults' nerves. I still like trying to understand things but am now more comfortable with ambiguity.
After putting myself through college and winning a fellowship to graduate school, I worked for a chain of newspapers in the Baltimore-Washington area, initially covering local and state politics.
Then in 2002, I moved to Prague. For most of the years since I have covered, either as an editor or reporter, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. I have worked in about 10 countries, from Armenia to Albania, and I have never lost my fascination with the way other people live or think.
My editing experiences have been a sort of boot camp, where I have quickly had to get misshapen pieces into fighting trim.
Finally, I know how much I don't know, a trait I learned to value from my journalistic heroes.