A few years ago many were predicting a bankruptcy of Mreza Plus, since the international community was not willing to invest a lot of money in the in the project. Due to a long-term structural support by Press Now that took four years (2001-2004), the TV station is still present in the media environment of Bosnia and Herzegovina and keeps a very stable second ranking position immediately after the biggest commercial television in the entire region.

Wouter Bos, leader of the Social-Democratic Party and Minister of Finance, has donated 4000 euro to Press Now. The money was assigned to Bos by an Amsterdam court as damages for violating his privacy by the magazine Weekend in 2007. The donation is “an unexpected but very pleasant surprise”, said Press Now-director Wilco de Jonge.

Staff members of twenty-six regional television stations have gathered in Gori, Georgia to attend the training course conducted by Press Now. The training has been organized in cooperation with the Georgian Association of Regional TV Broadcasters (GARB).

Press Now has issued a grant to Radio Jimma, a community radio station in Ethiopia, which plans to start broadcasting in April 2008. The radio station serves an audience 1,5 million listeners in the city of Jimma and around, in southwest Ethiopia. PN supports the new broadcaster by financing radio equipment and training facilities. 

25 journalists from Antalya and Burdur provinces in South of Turkey have attended the two-day workshop in Antalya given by Nico Haasbroek, former editor in chief of the Dutch national news programme, Esra Arsan of Bilgi Universty and Yücel Tunca of Photography Foundation. The workshop was part of a training program which is financially supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Press Now, with financial support of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch foundation “Democracy and Media”, is planning to set up an independent media centre in Iraqi Kurdistan. Judit Neurink, who has been training journalists in northern Iraq since 2003, will be working with Kurdish journalists and trainers to build a centre which main aim will be to improve the quality of Iraqi journalists and media.

According to a research by Arash Kamangir, a fanatic Persian blogger, the weblog from Radio Zamaneh, on www.radiozamaneh.com, takes a second place in the top ten list of links to Persian weblogs. This is a list that registers the number of times that a certain link to a Persian weblog is noted by someone, with the purpose to share this with other bloggers. After the Persian blog on BBC, with 21% the link that is mentioned most often, the blog of Radio Zamaneh follows with not less than an 18% share: a big achievement, seen the relatively short existence of this website.