WHAT WE DO

 

Kosovo 2.0 was founded as a new type of journalistic platform for Kosovo, the region and beyond — a platform that rejects the tabloidization of important issues. We believe that journalism should be thoughtful, nuanced and comprehensive. That’s why we take the time to deconstruct the news, providing our readers with context, historicity and insight. We are committed to explanatory, contextual and narrative journalism, where storytelling is not just about documenting the world around us, but also contributing to its reimagining. 

Established in 2010 as Kosovo’s very first blogging platform, K2.0 expanded and established itself as a critical and credible journalistic voice in the country and beyond. Our community of writers includes renowned thinkers, experienced reporters, civil rights defenders and top-notch writers whose perspectives are fresh and unafraid. Moreover, we continuously support young and emerging journalists and authors in their professional advancement. Our commitment to understanding the unique experiences and aspirations of our readers leads us to involve them in our editorial productions through article and blog submissions. We believe in a collaborative approach to narrative-making, allowing us to engage in global conversations with a touch of the local.

In short:

• We are a magazine focusing on explanatory, contextual and narrative journalism.
• We remain independent from political parties and other forms of outside influence.
• We work to uphold human rights through our editorial and dialogue programs.
• We work to support critical debate in the fields of arts and culture through our journalism.
• We organize a range of public programs that seek to inspire conversations about progressive, socially-engaged journalism, and about media, human rights and citizen-based activism.
• We organize tailored non-formal educational programs for young journalists and provide small-scale grants to local media actors with the aim of contributing to a more robust and sustainable media ecosystem.
• We cooperate with other media outlets and organizations in Kosovo and the region that uphold our journalistic values and principles.
• We are working to build a hybrid financial media model drawing on support from institutional donors and from the public in order to secure our long-term independence.
• We collaborate with a regional network of writers to publish articles that build and deepen connections across Kosovo, its neighbors, and diaspora communities worldwide.
• We work in three languages: Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and English. 

Our vision is a society that understands, questions and reimagines the world around us. And therefore we have made it our mission to create powerful, uncompromising journalism that listens to people’s experiences, explains complex realities, provides context and provokes conversations.

In order to do so, our team has guiding principles that drive our work.

• Our journalism is informed by the process of listening to people’s experiences.
• Our journalism centers around social justice, people’s struggles and hopes.
• Our journalism is guided by solidarity; we seek to create a space of dialogue, empathy and better understanding.
• Our journalism is guided by the principle of always providing context to stories and news by taking our time to truly understand the issues. 
• Our journalism is guided by professionalism; we don’t compromise on quality and we remain independent, critical and fair. 
• We don’t settle for the mainstream. We are persistent on the issues we believe are important, regardless of whether they are a current topic of debate or not. 
• We are creatively driven; we value aesthetics, innovation and experimentation in our journalism. 
• We are passionate about continuously improving our work and are always reflecting with a good dose of self-criticism.

Born in 2011 at a time when print media was globally in decline, K2.0’s print magazine collection was launched just a year after the birth of our media. Now more than a decade later, we have issues on topics ranging from migration to sex to public space. 

Visit our Print section to find out more about each of our editions and to purchase our eleven-issue collection or individual copies (most are in stock!).

Writing for K2.0

We are always looking for new voices at K2.0. We collaborate frequently with external authors, photographers and other creatives. If you want to work with us, pitch us a story.

As a regional magazine, we look for stories that offer a deeper understanding of the salient topics affecting Kosovo, the Balkans and beyond. Our mainstays are politics, social justice, human rights, culture and the arts, but we are always open to fresh angles and new topics.

We are a trilingual magazine that accepts submissions in Albanian, Serbian and English and our translators work with every article to publish each piece in all three languages. While our core focus is Kosovo, we also love stories related to Albania, the countries of former Yugoslavia (North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia), and the diasporas of these countries.

How to pitch

The best pitches make us excited to publish your article. Excite us.

Your pitch should answer these questions in a clear and succinct manner: What’s the story? What’s the narrative hook? Who are the characters? Why does the story need to be told now? Why are you the right person to tell it?

Your pitch should tell us this information in a captivating and elegant manner that convinces us you are a strong story-teller who can craft a compelling narrative.

We also want to see that you have read K2.0 and understand our editorial voice and interests. Your pitch should indicate which section of the magazine your story will be for.

Please keep your pitch down to a couple brief paragraphs at most. Also include a brief biographical statement so we know your background, and if you’ve published in the past, include links or clips to some of that work.

If you have already written your story and would like us to consider it for publishing, feel free to send us a draft, accompanied by a short biography about yourself and a picture of yours that we could include in the author bio.

Which magazine section?

Perspectives

We are looking for opinions, analysis and commentary on current social issues you feel should be discussed.

These should be in your own words, meaning, this is not the section for field reporting. You have some space here to include personal interpretation, though everything must be absolutely factually accurate, well argued and have coherent reasoning. We’ll want to be convinced that you have some expertise or unique perspective on the proposed topic. Perspectives are usually around 1,000 to 1,500 words.

In our Perspectives section we’ve covered topics like sexism in local media, Albanian socialist realist art, anti-Roma racism, femicide in Kosovo, and anti-Albanian attitudes in the Macedonian literary scene.

If you have an idea for an op-ed or a commentary on current political or social affairs, this is where it would run.

BlogBox

This is a creative space for people to share ideas, thoughts, experiences, fiction, poetry — pieces in our BlogBox section usually have a touch of the personal, and are more conversational than a Perspectives article. We often work with first time authors in this section. The length of these pieces can vary but you should aim for a minimum of 800 words.

In our BlogBox section we’ve published a personal account of what the complicated border regime between Serbia and Kosovo means for families, an obituary of an inspiring woman who built cultural bridges between Prishtina and Belgrade, and the story of a Jewish doctor who made his home in Prizren.

Some of our most popular blogs have been opinions and commentary from the diaspora and we love to facilitate these conversations, but we also want to publish more local voices and opinions as well.

In-depth

This is our section for narrative, explanatory or “news magazine” features. Here we proactively explore an issue at our own pace, rather than responding to the rapid news cycle. In-depth articles take the time to contextualize and explain the topic from a well-researched journalistic angle. Articles in this section are usually between 1,500 and 3,000 words.

The topics we’ve covered include the struggles of interpreters at the ICTY, the labor conditions of miners in northern Albania, and exciting new women artists in Kosovo. We’ve published profiles of significant figures in the arts and sciences as well as human-driven stories about marital rape, police misconduct, and war crimes investigations.

We often work with journalists outside K2.0 for In-depth articles and want to see your pitches, but we’ll want to see evidence that you have experience handling bigger journalistic projects and can access sources, get great quotes and tell important stories in a compelling manner.

Longform

Our Longform section is for ambitious pieces of literary journalism. We’ve published essays with a personal touch about complicated family histories and the “Albanian Ice Cream Bey of Zagreb,” as well as deeply researched articles about environmental activism, the failures of privatization and impediments to women claiming their property rights.

We love publishing Longform essays from external authors and want to hear your pitches, but you’ll need to convince us that you can pull off the article you are proposing and you should be prepared for extensive rounds of editing.

Photostories

Our photostories use images and light reporting to tell a narrative. If you’re a photographer with a journalistic or story-telling drive, we’re interested in hearing from you. Check out some of our previous photostories to see what we’re looking for.

Write to us: info@ktwopointzero.com

Working hours: Monday – Friday, from 9 AM to 5 PM

Address: Ferat Dragaj 25, Prishtinë 10000, Kosovë