Vivian Susko ’20 spent the summer of 2018 engaged in an immersive journalism project in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia. She interviewed nearly twenty people, spanning across varying generations and professions. The questions were tailored to the specific age range and career of each interviewee, but all encounters gathered information regarding the communist regime in Slovakia and the current government corruption still occurring today.
The next stage of the project involves the creation of an interactive website. The site will include a profile of each person that Susko interviewed, as well as a timeline with each place that she visited. The site will also include several articles discussing personal experiences, comparing American educational systems with those in Slovakia, and debating political corruption. For example, one article concerns the death of Jan Kuciak, a journalist murdered this past February in Slovakia just after having released an article exposing government corruption. It is Susko’s hope for this project to spark both interest and debate in an American University regarding a smaller corner of the world, a place many people might never otherwise have considered.
