What does it mean to run a media business, and why was it necessary to launch an English-language news site about the Republic of Moldova? Dumitru Tira, the founder of the REALITATEA press group, spoke about this and many other topics in the “Ход слоном Четвертой власти” (Move the Elephant of the Fourth Power) program on the Business Samurai YouTube channel.
“We have not fired a single person (despite the pandemic, despite the war) because the war has moved us even more, by about 50 percent, to PR. We worked at night, unloading wagons so that we could do journalism during the day.
Moreover, in April, we launched a project in Russian (Rupor. md), and, in April, we started a project in English (Moldovalive. md) because we started to get nervous that all the international press wrote: “Thank you, Romania”; “Thank you, Poland.” And we did not understand why no one wrote about Moldova, although we had much more effort than Poland and Romania,” Dumitru Tira said.
Thus, while analyzing the market, he realized that no one writes in English about the Republic of Moldova.
“We mobilized, and in just three weeks, we launched Moldovalive. MD, which is now growing very strongly. It has its unique content in three areas, its clients are local and foreign foreigners, including the press, and our diaspora, which should no longer talk for half an hour about what is Old Orhei or the MIMI castle, or they can open the site on their phone and drop the link,” he said.
According to Dumitru Tira, media is a solution for society.
“On the one hand, it is a business, but very specific, and in this sense, it must also meet certain needs that appear on the market.”
Currently, the press group includes the following sites: Realitatea. MD (news in Romanian); Bani. MD (finance in Romanian); Rupor. MD (news in Russian); Moldovalive. MD (news about the Republic of Moldova in English), RLIVE TV, and Rlive. MD (live broadcasting platform).