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TOL was founded as a Czech nonprofit organization in April 1999, the month after the final issue of its print predecessor, Transitions magazine, was published. The new organization was founded by four of the former print magazine's staff members who were dedicated to keeping the widely respected, cross-border coverage of the magazine alive. With the financial and professional support of the Open Society Institute's (OSI) Internet program and the Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF), TOL was resurrected online in July 1999. |
Past articles from TOL and past issues of Transitions magazine are available online to TOL members at http://www.tol.cz/join.htm.
Training journalists in post-communist Europe and Central Asia has been a key part of TOL’s mission from the outset. From our early emphasis on online, on-the-job training for young reporters, we have expanded into organizing specialized seminars for the region’s journalists on a variety of themes, such as covering EU integration, war crimes, diversity, reconciliation, and corruption. These seminar topics are often subjects on which commercial media provide little or no training and that they rarely cover.
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The MEMO 98 was organized and realized by Slovak NGOs in the period prior to the parliamentary elections in 1998 as a reaction to the absence of a working mediator of information on the media-politicians relationship. The fundamental goal of MEMO 98 is to report on the media's approach to the presentation of the Slovak political scene. MEMO 98 presents its research results to the Slovak institutions and to the public, as to cover a lack of information in the field. |
MEMO 98 implements activities both in Slovakia and abroad. Among the donors of Memo98, it is worthy of mentioning the National Endowement For Democracy, the Freedom House, German Marshall Fund, the British Embassy in Bratislava.