A Newsroom on the Move

In North Macedonia, much of the country’s journalism is still centred around the capital. IRL moves in the other direction: its Mobile Newsroom takes reporters, editors, video teams, and engagement staff into towns and regions where local media has disappeared, weakened, or fallen under political pressure. When people lose access to credible local journalism, corruption becomes harder to expose, public services receive less scrutiny, and residents are left to piece together information through rumour, social media, or politically captured outlets.

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The IRL team stays on location for weeks, listening carefully to people before it reports. They follow local leads and turn stories of corruption and neglect into investigations people can see, understand, and use. Its reach is striking for a newsroom in a country of around 1.8 million people, with large audiences across social platforms and investigations that travel far beyond the towns where they begin.

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For Limelight, this is what independent journalism can look like when it is given room to experiment.

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IRL is led by women in a media environment where visibility can bring pressure, attacks, and legal threats. While their identities inform the newsroom’s work, they aren’t at the centre of it. Its investigations combine rigour with attention to the people living through corruption, injustice, and institutional neglect.

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They use film, photography, and documentary techniques to expose corruption that often hides behind paperwork, procedure, and language. When people do not have to decode an abstract scheme, they can see who is affected, where the money goes, and what power looks like up close.

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Through their new initiative Story Lab, IRL is testing whether public interest films and series can help fund future investigations. This model brings journalists, filmmakers, and young creatives together to produce work that can reach even wider audiences and generate income for the newsroom.

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