In the aftermath of the negativity towards the Eurovision Song Contest this year from the Western countries, and the so-called �rise of the east�, esctoday.com has been doing some soul searching amongst the team. We are asking ourselves: Are we really neutral? and what can we do to help ensure the Eurovision Song Contest remains balanced?
Whilst we have done everything possible to remain neutral, by providing unbiased and balanced coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest for all entrants, one thing did not occur to us until this weekend: Are we promoting the Central and European countries at the expense of the Western countries?
esctoday.com is an English speaking website. English is understood as a second language by far more people in Western Europe than in Central and Eastern Europe. So, by giving equal weight to all countries, we may in fact be helping the Central and Eastern countries to pick up votes in the West at the expense of the older Western participants who we are not promoting in the Central / Eastern countries to such an extent.
We are now seriously investigating the possibility of opening a Russian/ Slavic section of the site in the hope that we can develop our number of readers in the newer Eurovision Song Contest countries, so that the Western Countries are better understood and known in Central and Eastern Europe.
We simply do not have the resources to run this website in every language. In 2004, the website toyed with the idea of publishing in multiple languages, but the workload was simply too high and only 3-4% of total page views came from the multiple language news. With the huge increase in popularity of the Eurovision Song Contest in Central and Eastern Europe, we are now actively revisiting this idea.
esctoday.com has always prided itself on being neutral, and by taking this step, we hope to add more credence to this claim. We know theremay be some reaction to this, and possibly some political reaction. We are on a very steep learning curve with this, so if you have any views or wish to help us research this, please email [email protected]
We are now issuing a call to Russian and Slavic readers to join our team to help create these new sections of the website. If you have a strong understanding of English and are capable of translating our articles into Russian and or Serbian/Croatian or writing a daily round-up of our news, please email [email protected] to discuss joining the team.
