The articles published in Satakieli are mainly written by freelance journalists with an immigrant background. Their topics, perspectives and ways of dealing with them arise from different foreign-language groups and communities in Finland. In the Finnish-language media, these are often poorly represented.
– Our idea has been to make meaningful journalism about and for immigrant communities, says Tuomas Pulsa, Editor-in-Chief of Satakieli.
– From the reception of Satakieli's articles and the number of readers, it can be seen that there is a significant need for this kind of journalism. The nomination for the Grand Prize for Journalism shows that the significance of this reform work is also recognised within the industry.
So far, Satakieli has published journalism in Arabic, English, Ukrainian, Russian and Finnish.
– According to Statistics Finland, more than half a million people living in Finland at the end of last year had a mother tongue other than Finnish, Swedish or Sámi. In order for them to integrate into society and for us to be able to share common facts as a basis for discussion, we must be able to offer journalism that is written in their own language, but from the perspective of their new home country, says Anne Leppäjärvi, Editor-in-Chief responsible for the development of Satakieli.
A special area of development at Satakieli is the collaboration of the journalistic multilingual team, and they want to focus on this more deeply in the future.
– We have skilled, distinguished journalists living in Finland who know the languages spoken by new Finns. From the point of view of their employment, it is essential to develop an editorial process in which journalism is carried out by a multilingual team. There are no shortcuts or magic tricks for this. The most important resource is simply the working time that people are willing to use to increase pluralism, Leppäjärvi says.
The central mission of Satakieli is that journalists from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds have access to topics and perspectives that are easily overlooked by Finnish-speaking journalists. Finnish journalism and its audience as a whole benefit if these topics are reported.
– In 2024, Satakieli has dealt with, for example, the shady bus connections between Finland and Ukraine and mental health problems among Arabic-speaking immigrants. In both cases, it is a significant phenomenon that has wider significance in Finland, but which is still easily overlooked in the media, says Pulsa.
Satakieli falls within the scope of the self-regulation of the Council for Mass Media in Finland. The most significant financier of Satakieli has been the Media Research Foundation.
The Grand Prize for Journalism (Suuri Journalistipalkinto) is the most significant recognition given to journalism in Finland each year. The winners will be announced on 12 March 2025.
In the picture the working group Tuomas Pulsa, Anne Leppäjärvi, Nadiia Fedorova, Juuso Koponen, Reetta Nousiainen, Kaijaleena Runsten and Kati Kelola. Source: Suurijournalismipalkinto.fi.
