Thimphu (Bhutan): Pema Choden Tenzin had her one-month-old baby with her when she was working on her first issue of Yeewong, Bhutan’s only women and lifestyle magazine. She didn’t have a real office, and was working from her parents’ garage. She said that for that issue in 2011, which was on the royal wedding, she was basically by herself.“I had freelance photographers. But compiling the issue, getting the right up together, I was doing that all by myself. It was really quite stressful,” Tenzin told The Wire on a crisp late-August afternoon in Bhutan’s capital city.Fast-forward eight years, and not only has Tenzin managed to grow the magazine from a print publication into a digital space, she is now also experimenting – and succeeding – with a new format of telling stories: videos. Print, she said, is now “getting a whole new life through videos”.Bhutan, the small South Asian nation of about eight lakh people, is relatively new to the digital space and social media. The two platforms, Tenzin believes, “have really given us the power to tell stories instantly, and to design them the way that we want”.Pema Choden Tenzin. Photo: FacebookThe nation, she said, is undergoing a highly “exciting time” with “a lot of innovate ideas coming up”. One space that she said where that change is most stark is social media, which has not only “helped democratised distribution channels” but also given freedom from traditional media.“We’re not just dependent on magazines that are in the market, or PBS for that matter,” she said, adding that social media – particularly Instagram, Facebook and YouTube – gives an opportunity to everyone, thus levelling the playing field.As the CEO and chief editor at Yeewong for nearly a decade, Tenzin has worked on many a print issue, with a lot of content focused on gender identity and women’s rights. While she is of the opinion that women in her country have a greater autonomy than those in the neighbouring ones, some inconspicuous differences still do exist. These, Tenzin said, she has seen herself in the workspace.“The kind of expectations that are there from women, it’s not necessarily the same for men,” she noted, adding: “It takes a lot more grit, a lot more challenges for women to really push themselves to the front.”In the kind of stories that the magazine does, the focus is not necessarily on the gender part of a woman’s identity. For instance, the focus will not be on ‘the female businesswomen’, in order to make the readers “feel that they are in a space where they’re considered business people, not identified just by their gender.”Also read | Book Review: How Technology Transformed Indian Media and PoliticsWhile she describes the print space as her “baby”, moving on to the digital space is like watching that baby grow. “With that comes a lot of opportunity,” Tenzin noted. It was around 2014-15 when Tenzin got introduced to this space, and launched the website for the magazine. “The buzz around the magazine was only around when it came out, about 2-3 times a year. With the website, we can now put out updates 2-3 times a week,” she said.Another reason for moving to digital was the restricted sources of funding. “What I realised was that print wasn’t doing well anywhere,” Tenzin shares. The advertising space – their major source of funding – was shrinking every month. “Everyone is basically targeting the same people for ads. When we started, there were nine other magazines – they all died, shut down. But I kept holding on,” she said.The digital space, especially social media, has been an “eye-opening experience” for the editor. With the magazine she said, she was always behind the scenes. But with the website came the realisation that branding plays a crucial role in this industry. “That means putting yourself forward, putting your face on the work that you’re doing,” she said.With finances being tight, travel content was a lucrative option, which is Tenzin’s current focus. Having learnt to edit videos, she has done several stories in south and central Bhutan – which traditionally haven’t gotten a lot of publicity.“When we started doing stories there, we generated a lot of interest, not just from outsiders but from locals and domestic travellers as well. That’s been a whole space where impact has been affective, and instant,” she said.Further, she adds, “There are a lot of people who want to listen and see what’s Bhutan up to, and what makes it unique. Every story, with every trip, with every interview that we do, it’s all about unraveling these different layers.”Also read | From Politics to Linguistic Battles – the Ghosts and Triumphs of Hindi MediaSocial media is allowing Bhutanese to tell the stories of their unique identity – and the way they want to. For Tshering Denkar, the platform has allowed her to propel a wave of looking at travel differently. The 29-year-old is the country’s first female solo vlogger, who posts her adventures in Bhutan on ‘Denkar Getaway‘ and Instagram – where she has nearly 11,000 followers.Photo: Instagram/denkarsgetaway“I want to make people understand that the interiors of Bhutan can be a place for Bhutanese to travel,” she told The Wire, adding: “We Bhutanese don’t realise how beautiful our own country is, there are so many places that you can actually go for vacation and have ‘Instagramable’ pictures. It’s culturally also so diverse”.“Bhutan is so massive and diverse,” said Denkar, explaining that the nation has several diverse qualities like the highlanders in Merak – that have their own cultural and linguistic characteristics.Writing about the place in her blog in March, she noted:“The place offers visitors the unique opportunity to closely observe and experience the rare and unique semi-nomadic lifestyle and culture of the Brokpas (highlanders) – who depend and coexist with their animals (like yaks, sheeps and cattle etc.) that are in fact their food and shelter and their lifeline.”Social media, and especially Instagram, has given her space to market herself. “I often say that social media is my office. I don’t have a workplace that I have to go. I can create a job of my own,” she said.“Most people think there is a lot of vanity involved in putting yourself out there,” Denkar said, adding, “I think it creates a new method of communication.”The vlogger has been traveling alone through Bhutan – interacting with locals, trying different cuisines and exploring the culture – for the last couple years. The digital space she says is getting stronger, with a large chunk of population in Bhutan getting on social media. “It helps in making connections for work,” she said. “People get to know me there.”