Twenty years on, Radio Zamaneh remains a community-centered, digitally rooted outlet amplifying marginalized voices, sustaining critical journalism beyond state and market pressures amid shifting media landscapes.
“Radio Zamaneh” was founded at a moment when the media landscape in Iran and the world stood on the threshold of profound transformations—changes that not only altered the form and format of media, but also reshaped the relationship between voices, marginalized groups, and power. Now, twenty years after Zamaneh began, an opportunity has emerged not only to look back at our own history, but also to rethink our place amid the rapid media shifts of the past two decades.
The Origins of “Radio Zamaneh” in the Persian Blogosphere
Radio Zamaneh took shape in the early years of the 1380s (Iranian calendar)—roughly 2001–2004 in the Gregorian calendar—at a time when the Persian blogosphere had reached its peak: a creative and spontaneous movement that, for the first time, made large-scale free conversation possible for Iranian users. The first people behind Radio Zamaneh had emerged from the blogging movement and were among its active figures.
The radio that was launched also had a distinct format and carried the atmosphere of blogs. On the Radio Zamaneh website, too, links were provided to a collection of blogs. In that period, text still had a strong audience, and readers patiently followed blogs and, when they could, left comments as well. Debate and conversation took shape in written form.
Unlike many Persian-language media outside the country, we quickly chose the internet as our primary ecosystem, and from the very beginning became a medium bound up with digital transformation.
In its first website and early years, Radio Zamaneh was not merely a website; it was a different kind of internet radio, with a format that turned blog culture into sound. Programs were narrative-driven, cultural, and social. Some editors and writers had their own independent pages—something between a blog and a personal column. Writers broke the rigid, formal templates of mainstream journalism. Attention to lived experience and individual narratives, and writing with a critical edge, were part of our editorial practice. We tried to open space for voices that had no place in mainstream media.
Zamaneh’s Mission
From the beginning, our gaze was directed towards culture, society, and politics. The subjects we covered were either pushed to the margins in large official media or did not receive much attention there. Speaking about some of these subjects was even forbidden. We paid close attention to issues related to women’s rights; oppressed ethnic groups; workers and low-income communities; underground culture; marginalized voices; alternative currents and diverse social movements; people with disabilities; the student movement; labor and professional movements; the justice-seeking movement; the movement against the death penalty; and issues related to queer people and sexual minorities—topics that at the time were treated as taboo. Radio Zamaneh was the first Persian-language outlet to dedicate a special page to queer issues as well.
From the outset, we have been a community-centered media, not state-centered, and not dependent on market logic.
The door of “Radio Zamaneh,” from the beginning until today, has always been open to writers and thinkers beyond the editorial staff, and we remain eager to host contributions, critical voices, and diverse analyses from different writers in this media.
After twenty years—through change and transformation, and changes of editors-in-chief—this constant feature has remained enduring in our outlet: a focus on society and on voices that do not have an adequate platform to be heard.
Analyzing realities from critical and provocative angles has been among our aims. Within our own editorial team, too, we have tried to keep a culture of critique alive. We remain committed to being a platform for prisoners, social and political and civil and environmental activists, women, people with disabilities, students, religious and ethnic minorities, the deprived, justice-seeking movements, and victims of structural violence.
Saying Goodbye to the Radio
Gradually, Persian-speaking audiences became less inclined to listen to radio, and for us it came at a heavy cost. Ultimately, structural and media transformations forced us to set aside “radio,” and “Radio Zamaneh” became “Zamaneh.” Of course, we still call ourselves “Radio Zamaneh,” and sometimes, for short, we refer to ourselves simply as “Zamaneh.” Alongside a website that was updated from the start, we built other platforms as well: Zamaneh Academy, Zamaneh’s Citizen Tribune, and Petitions.
Social networks gradually replaced blogging, and some audiences also lost the patience to read long articles. In this process, we built our social media too, but our prominence never appeared there in the way it did for many other outlets. Unlike us, many other media—inside or outside Iran—adopted a different policy, invested in producing social media content, and gained millions of likes. These outlets dedicated a large part of their editorial teams to producing content for social media. Others synchronized themselves entirely with the rhythm of that space.
We have continued to concentrate on producing high-quality, diverse content on the Radio Zamaneh website. The topics that make our website are not necessarily the kind that attract all social media audiences. In our policy-making, we avoided entertainment, sports news, or hot global headlines. The collective judgment of our editorial team has been—and remains—that other media already produce enough content on these subjects. We will remain faithful to our mission.
Despite ups and downs in an era dominated by speed, superficiality, and the attention economy, we still try to show that media can be independent of power institutions, critical, analytical, and loyal to groups pushed to the margins. The past twenty years have shown that a community-centered media, if it is rooted in society, can endure—quietly, modestly, and without pretension—even if it remains small.
Twenty years have passed since the official registration of “Radio Zamaneh.” Over these twenty years, more than a thousand journalists, writers, analysts, and media activists have, at different times, worked with Zamaneh’s editorial team as staff or freelance contributors.
Without their participation and responsible presence, Zamaneh would never have flourished. In this text, out of respect for the large family of “Radio Zamaneh,” no names have been highlighted. We are grateful for the efforts of every single one of our colleagues, from the past to today. We are certain that Zamaneh would not have endured to this day without their love, sacrifice, and professional experience. We also deeply thank you—our audience and faithful companions.
Our love for you, and the ideal of building a free country—rights-based, truth-seeking, equal, welcoming, and diverse—is the same flame that keeps the Zamaneh editorial team alight.
