Matra Funded EJC Curriculum Development Workshop held in Tsakhkadzor, Armenia

Maastricht - March 20, 2008

Sixteen law and journalism professors from eight leading Universities in Armenia gathered in Tsakhkadzor, a picturesque mountain town close to the capital Yerevan, to discuss the issues of teaching investigative journalism, media law and media ethics. The workshop is the first activity within the two-year Journalism Practices Enhancement Project funded by the Matra programme of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Two international experts, Bert Lanting of the Dutch daily de Volkskrant and Mark Guthrie, a human rights lawyer, and three Armenian experts, Karen Andreasyan of the Media and Law Institute, Shushan Doydoyan of the Armenian Freedom of Information Center and Mariam Barseghyan, former producer of TV news show Yerkri teman, joined the group of professors to contribute their practical and academic knowledge in journalism and law.

In their opening remarks and presentations, the international and local experts stressed the importance of investigative journalism in fighting corruption. They focused on the specific professional as well as legal difficulties in conducting journalistic investigations.

Lanting and Barseghyan shared their experiences as practicing journalists in the Netherlands and Armenia. Shushan Doydoyan, a radio journalist and a professor at the Yerevan State University journalism school, who also received a law degree from the same university, bridged the topics of journalism and law as well as best practice within an academic education. Guthrie and Andreasyan talked about the importance of media law and media ethics in the work of journalists and also referred to the need for teaching media law in the law schools.

Participants focused their questioning on the real potential for Armenian media outlets to sponsor journalistic investigations. They were particularly skeptical about the ability of Armenian journalists to conduct independent, professional, ethical and legally safe investigations. Many professors accepted that Armenian journalism schools are not ready to provide a proper education and training for building the capacity of graduating journalists.

In light of the skepticism and criticism of Armenian journalism and the curricula of the Armenian journalism and law schools, two new publications, disseminated at the workshop, were highly appreciated: a Teaching Module and a Reader on investigative journalism, media law and media ethics.

The Teaching Module and the Reader were both prepared and published prior to the workshop due to the joint efforts of the European Journalism Center and the Media and Law Institute. The Teaching Module included selected syllabi and practical classroom exercises from several well-known journalism schools including Columbia University, The University of Missouri School of Journalism and Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The Reader incorporated papers and academic texts from leading European, Russian and Armenian authors. Both publications were reviewed at the workshop, some of the exercises were tested and written feedback of participating professors was collected for future improvement of the Teaching Module and of the Reader.

At the final session, Andreasyan presented the rules of the upcoming competition of the journalism and law students as part of the practical teaching on investigative journalism, media law and media ethics.

The competition, the next activity within the two-year Matra grant, is based on a mock detective story on murder and trafficking, which will be investigated by journalism students who will conduct interviews with the story’s characters, research via Internet and other resources, decrypt codes and use other challenging journalistic techniques.

The law students will serve as supporting legal teams for the journalists in the early stages of the competition, followed by the law teams involvement in a moot court. The participating university professors received clear instructions to act as coaches for their respective teams and all participated in a kick-off meeting of the competition, held on 29 February, 2008, in Yerevan.

The second curricula development workshop is planned for February 2009 with the participation of additional professors from the respective universities.

Posted on March 20, 2008 by .
Filed under news.

Curriculum development programme begins in Armenia

Maastricht - November 09, 2007

There is no shortage of newspapers in Armenia, where newsstands boast more than 30 different newspapers – for a population of less than 4 million people.

Deciding which title to buy, though, is more a matter of political preference than anything else: Each party seems to be influencing a newspaper, so each paper presents a different spin on the day’s events.

Such a climate is a predictably hostile environment for investigative journalism, stories predicated upon substantiated fact, verification and credible sources.

Also, the factions of the political system are mirrored in a fractured media market. The largest paper – Novoe Vremya (New Times) has a circulation of less than 10,000 per day.

When it comes to audiovisual media, cronyism in the regulating body, the National Commission on TV and Radio, has had a chilling effect with its restrictive licensing regimes – which do not necessarily include room for opposing viewpoints.

The case of one broadcaster – A1+, which was taken off air in 2002 (sparking mass protests) and has since submitted, unsuccessfully, at least a dozen broadcasting licence applications – is presently before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

“Young democracies face problems of implementation when they give wide discretion to regulatory bodies,” says Mr. Karen Andreasyan, one of the founders of Armenia’s Media Law Institute. “Often good law is written, based on Western models, but implementation is a problem.”

He is one of many who want to try and polish the lacklustre media landscape in the South Caucasus former Soviet state.

Based in Yerevan, the Media Law Institute will later this month begin to lead the two-year Journalism Practices Enhancement Project, in conjunction with the Armenian Freedom of Information Centre and the European Journalism Centre.

The two-year programme is funded by the Matra Social Transformation Programme, the development arm of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The programme is an effort to create an enduring force of journalists and lawyers by way of reforming the existing curricula at eight of the 17 Armenian universities.

Andreasyan discussed the project recently with the EJC:

Question. What is the current journalism curriculum at most universities like? What changes would you like to see?
Answer. It’s a reformed, old Soviet curriculum, which means that changes occur very randomly when they happen. But thanks to these or other initiatives, we can work on that.
We want to study how journalism and law departments should look in university. In a way many universities (mainly public) have these Soviet programmes and Soviet way of teaching. Lecturing, students answering automatically without thinking – mechanical education, we call it there. Of course there are cases when practical classes are introduced and practical work is done in the schools.
We’d like to harmonize, bring in more ethics courses. We will work with eight universities, try to develop them and improve the standards.

Q. Do you anticipate much resistance on the part of the universities?
A. I do not think it will be difficult. It will be harder later on to get people started with really investigative pieces. Faculties are ready to enroll in such a project – they themselves understand how hard it is to teach with old Soviet methodologies, how hard it is to prepare good journalists when they don’t give practical courses.

Q. How will you try to leave some tracks of this programme, so as to ensure a lasting legacy?
A. It will have some components, like a website for curriculum improvement and other related topics as well as the hoped for concrete changes in university curricula.
Second, the Media Law Institute will finally realize one of its best ideas. We’ve been having this idea for a long time. The realization of such an idea is big motivation for staff of the Media Institute – and other organizations – for the long term.

Q. The project is funded by Matra, by the Dutch government. How does their help lead to the goals of the project?
A. We were trying to implement this project for two years. It’s a long-lasting idea in a way. Matra actually makes it possible, giving financial aid for first two years. We believe once the program concludes, the universities are going to be self-sustainable.

Q. Why did you decide to partner with a group like the EJC for this?
A. First of all, it’s good for people that an organisation like the EJC has a belief that something is possible.
The EJC can actually give some models that would enlarge the perspective of these people. The EJC has international experience. It’s very modern in this way, with every method of European experience, resources, expertise and information. It’s good to bring in an outside group like this and show these kinds of things can do better – investigative journalism and legal protection can be better. And you will have trainers who know how to make things better and what shall be done better. We just need inspiration to get there and methods.

Q. The Media Law Institute will lead the project. How do you see your role?
A. I was one of the founders of this institute in 2002. The main idea behind it was to create a group of people, mostly lawyers and journalists, to come together and think together how to improve the situation with media in Armenia.
At the time there was a lot of NGO funding. It was an active media reform period. We started with legislative training, helping journalists and lawyers.
We have our leadership, board of directors, who are thinking strategically how to develop the institute. Right now we’re thinking about anti-corruption and using investigative journalism to fight corruption, which is one of the biggest problems in Armenia.

Q. What are your hopes for the Armenian media landscape? What will it look like in five or 10 years?
A. I wish of course first of all that we have a bigger variety in audiovisual media, something we are not targeting directly with this project. We see our role right now as preparing journalists to do the revolution from inside. Changes will not come from external places. We believe having programmes like this, training clean and nice professional journalists within the coming five years will make this revolution. We want to raise the standards of journalists as the others are trying to feed into the competition. The media landscape, I don’t know how good it is, but it’s very competitive. If two, three or four newspapers change their quality of reporting others will follow, and in five years time at least in print media will behave responsibly. The community of journalists can raise the value of each of their words. For audiovisual we would expect more freedom and that will come faster if the print media would become more responsible, and better.

Q. What’s the influence of new media, online journalism and blogging, in Armenia?
A. It is starting to play a bigger role, become more and more popular. But there are some problems with getting people online. Generally we can be sure those who are online have a better balance of information, those who can access new media like Internet. Even many television stations are having good websites, and many newspapers also have proper sites.
The use of online is biggest in Yerevan, with wealthy people, intellectual people with higher intellectual standards. They use Internet media more than any other group. New media is really the best source.

Q. What are the problems with getting people online?
A. There are Internet cafes are every 100 meters, especially in the capital. Even in all remote villages you can find Internet points. The problem is not Internet access technically. But that people above 40 years old typically wouldn’t know how to use the computer. It’s more computer literacy as opposed to point of Internet.

Posted on November 09, 2007 by .
Filed under development.

Encouraging journalism across the Mediterranean region

Maastricht - October 25, 2007

A group of 20 editors and media directors from Mediterranean newspapers and press agencies say they could benefit from more cooperation with their European counterparts as they wrangle with both global and local challenges in the mass-media landscape.

On 16 October, Europe for Mediterranean Journalists, an 18-month project funded by a consortium of media developers that includes the European Journalism Center – brought the editors to Amsterdam to evaluate the project while they were there to visit the Second World Digital Publishing Conference and the 10th World Editor and Marketeer conference.

The aim of the project is to dialogue with independent media outlets across the Mediterranean in the spirit of the European Neighbourhood Policy. The initiative encourages synergy between journalists from the European countries and the MEDA counties (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Palestine), and offers a platform for regional co-operation and knowledge sharing.

The participants of the Europe for Mediterranean Journalists were generally positive about the progress of the results of the project.

One particularly memorable part of the project, which included seminars, round table discussions, and training sessions held in Europe and the Middle East, was the chance to team up on the job with Romanian journalists. The journalists said they enjoyed the opportunity to compare methods.

The group in Amsterdam said they felt that future projects should facilitate similar encounters between journalists from both sides of the Mediterranean. They also asked for future training sessions to be more narrowly tailored – involving, for example, speakers lecturing about economic policies in Europe that affect the local level.

In this way, they said information and expertise between the European countries and its direct neighbours can be exchanged.

The Europe for Mediterranean Journalists consortium will apply for further funding in hopes of providing a platform for such dialogue.

When they weren’t reviewing the Europe for Mediterranean Journalists initiative, the media directors from the Mediterranean area were able to meet with Dutch editors and academics to discuss innovations in Dutch journalism and how European news is covered in the Dutch media.

They met with editorial writer Paul Brill at De Volkskrant to learn about the newsgathering operations at the Netherlands’ second-largest newspaper. Brill talked about De Volkskrant’s efforts to dialogue with readers while still maintaining its own unique editorial voice.

During the day there were several discussions about the development of media in the Netherlands. Newspapers in both the Mediterranean and the Netherlands are trying to reverse the readership decline of its readership by offering new products such as magazines, free papers or Internet services. Editors in both regions talked about changes in the size of the paper from broadsheet to tabloid.

Europe for Mediterranean Journalists aims to teach journalists from Mediterranean countries how to gather information about European affairs. The program consists of seminars, for instance about the economic relations between the EU and the Mediterranean countries, and of training in new media technologies and methods.

Y. Amartib

Posted on October 25, 2007 by .
Filed under .

Macedonian non-profit to open journalism university

Maastricht - September 13, 2007

The telephone cannot conceal the proud smile on Biljana Petkovska’s face as she discusses the Macedonian Institute for Media’s plans to open a three-year college for journalists.

“You know,” she says, chuckling, “We’re running one hell of an operation down here.”

In November, the six-year-old institute will apply to the Ministry of Education of The Republic of Macedonia for the accreditation it needs to open a university for journalists. It plans to continue some of its non-profit activities alongside the for-profit school.

The MIM has already achieved most of the criteria necessary to go on the free market as a university, Petkovska says, so it expects its application will be approved.

The MIM is in its fourth year of mid-career training with its “One Year School for Journalism,” run out of its Skopje training facility. But it plans to open a three-year program starting in September, 2008, Petkovska says.

Petkovska, the senior program coordinator at the MIM, says the institute graduates about 25 journalists each year from its one-year program. It hopes to enroll about 50 students each year in its university-level program.

Journalism education is just one sector trying to prepare for foreign investments Macedonians hope will bring the country closer to the economic stability it needs to secure membership in the European Union. The landlocked Balkan nation of roughly 2 million people is at present an EU candidate country.

“We would like really to bring European standards here and establish cooperation with our students and European students,” Petkovska says. “We’d like to bring Macedonia closer to Europe as much as it’s possible.”

Most journalism education in the former Yugoslav federation is theory-based, so the MIM has found its niche in practical, hands-on training. Its one-year students presently use MIM facilities to interview politicians, aid workers and civil servants about various topics. The MIM then uses its contacts in the mainstream media to make sure its students’ pieces air on popular radio and television channels.

“It may sound strange for some countries that you have national coverage but for us that’s easy,” Petkovska says as she mentions she can drive from one side of her country to the other in less than three hours. “Whenever we make media projects we are trying to make national coverage.”

The European Journalism Center is just one of the new partners with which the MIM will liase as it moves forwards with its plans to expand.
The MiM recently invited EJC, represented by Project Executive Josh LaPorte, to be a part of their latest board. 
“We are delighted MiM chose EJC as a key partner in their future strategy, which takes into account Macedonia’s steps toward deeper European integration and the need for the media community to report on and analyze them thoroughly.” LaPorte said.

Petkovska took time early in September to discuss the university and other MIM projects with the EJC:

Question. How will the university be structured?
Answer. One group of students will study journalism and the other group will study PR. These are the plans and we hope that we’re going to make this together with our partners the Danish School of Journalism because they are one of the founders of the MIM. Most of our know-how is based on their methodology. The Danish School of Journalism is based in Arhus and is one of the oldest journalism schools in Europe, I think.
So until now we had a very good productive cooperation. We have their know-how, we have 15 trainers here trained by the Danes. So there is a local capacity who can deliver practical media information.
Q. What are some of the other programs MIM operates?
A. In November we launch for the third time a Roma mainstream media program. That means that we educate young, talented Roma people to work for the mainstream media. By this, we want to achieve that we stimulate news diversity and we give chances to about 12 Roma students each year to become part of the process of creating the editorial policy and therefore to effect public opinion. The idea is that they don’t cover only Roma-related issues.
Q. You also work with NGOs, correct? In what capacity?
A. We provide training for them on basic media communication so they know in the future how to communicate with the media how to organize their press and press releases and how to find the newsworthiness in the projects they’re creating so they can get more visibility and publicity.
Q. Is this where the students in the One-Year School for Journalism get material for their broadcasts?
A. Yes. The students had last year a television show which is called Our Circle and that was covering civic projects. Our idea was to stimulate civic journalism. Civic journalism is also part of a module they have in the program.
Q. How do the visa regulations for citizens of Macedonia affect journalists?
A. It makes it very difficult for journalists on one hand but for students even more. It’s really a tough issue. It’s really a frustrating one because you can find here students who have never been outside the region. Even if they have money it’s very hard to get visas. We have here some really talented, brave, bright young people who are well-educated and it would be good for them if they can mix with European students and travel. But this visa regime is really awful.
Q. What is the media landscape like in Macedonia?
A. Generally speaking we have a lot of media. When you speak in international terms from the aspect of marketing orientation and the commercials that are supposed to finance the operation I think it’ really a time where the numbers should be downsized. Because there is no economic logic in such existence. You have a market with two million people and there are about 200 news media outlets. So that’s really a lot. These are just the ones we know, broadcast media, magazines. I’m not counting online issues. That’s something else.
Q. Are there as many media owners as papers? Or is ownership concentrated in a few hands?
A. There are also a lot of media owners. But also those that are mainstream media and most influential, they do not belong to one person but the ownership is diversified. We have a situation where presidents of political parties have very influential national media especially television. They’re owners of that, maybe their sons or someone in the family.
Q. I know that the United States Agency for International Development – one of your partners – has made Macedonia the first all-broadband wireless country its size or larger in the world. What are the implications of this project for online journalism?
A. We have very good Internet coverage all over the country and the percent of people who use Internet is growing fast. So also the development of IT technology is something the government is really focused on. It’s something we think will be attractive for foreign investors.
Q. How does it impact blogging? Are blogs popular in Macedonia?
A. Yes, blogging is very attractive. It is also there are a lot of popular journalists that have their blogs. Blogging sort of opened a new dimension of exchanging thoughts and ideas and exchanging. It’s something growing, something that’s very popular. Mainly among young people.

Posted on September 13, 2007 by .
Filed under news.

Innovation Journalism Conference a success

Maastricht - August 08, 2007

The tune of society’s conversation with itself sounds increasingly like punk rock music, said Stanford University researcher David Nordfors at the European Journalism Centre’s three-day conference on innovation journalism.

To Nordfors, who coined the phrase ‘innovation journalism’ in 2003, mainstream media today comes off a bit like a commercial rock band, something like Led Zeppelin. And to the common man sitting way back in the cheap seats, rock legends like Led Zep look and sound a bit out of focus.

More fun and accessible to the everyman are local punk bands, the indie groups rocking out in local public houses, he said. They are closer to the people, much more direct with their message. And they don’t need big trucks for lighting and sound equipment to get their message across. Everybody can “perform” if they have something vital to say.

When “punk” first cropped up in the late seventies, rock critics saw it as a paradigm change that turned music into a more democratic endeavour, away from big corporations and big money. Innovation journalism, as Nordfors presented it at the July conference, is concerned with the paradigm changes of today, stressing the importance of technological innovations and addressing the necessity of media coverage of these developments.

For many present-day journalists working at traditional media outlets – and the concerned publishers eyeing their account ledgers – the idea of this a shift remains terrifying.

“A lot of journalists feel threatened within their traditional structures,” said Wilfried Ruetten, director of the EJC.

More than 20 media experts from around Europe and the United States convened in Maastricht, the Netherlands, to discuss innovation journalism and the innovation ecosystem. The EJC partnered with the Amsterdam-Maastricht Summer University, Stanford and Deutche Welle to host the conference.

The EJC is likely to hold another innovation conference next year. A date has tentatively been set for early September.

Most of this year’s speakers, like Evgeny Morozov, the director of new media for Transitions Online, used their presentations to point out innovative developments in new media.

Morozov argued for the wisdom of the crowds, endorsing a bottom-up innovation process stemming from the diverse knowledge distributed among the growing number of people who are socially networking across the so-called blogosphere. Individual experts producing blogs, and the masses using use platforms such as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube, are further positive aspects of community.

“As technology gets smarter, paradoxically we see more and more emphasis put on the role of human interaction,” he noted.

Nordsfors stressed the benefit of innovation in a democratic society and the need to understand the horizontal nature of innovation processes through innovation journalism, which treats innovation as a topic and follows its development across various wavelengths, be they technology, business, politics, etc.

In the vertically-structured newsrooms of today, it can be difficult to isolate the concept of innovation and add it as a buzzword to society’s daily dialogue.

Daniel Sokolov, a Vienna-based freelance journalist writing about tech and innovation news, advocated good, old-fashioned community involvement as a way to connect the dots of vertically-structured news beats. He pointed out the importance of talking about trends, trying to get a larger picture, crossing geographic borders. Journalists sometimes have an easier time spotting innovation in societies other than their own, he noted.

Sarah Schantin-Williams of IFRA Newsplex, a consulting group, pointed to several newsrooms, mainly the Daily Telegraph, which have recently reorganised in order to be more innovative. This reorganisation will allow them to be more up to date by focussing on a 24/7 updated news schedule the web allows. Moreover, by integrating more user comments, newspapers can widen their scope to be more inclusive of community aspects Also, by adding video, they are free to leave the narrow constraints of paper based information and can go for a richer and more engaging multimedia experience.

Newsrooms need to focus more on ideas and planning if they’re to produce multi-media packages, she said.

Deutsche Welle, the German broadcasting corporation that employs about 1,500 people from over 30 countries to produce programming in 30 languages, is trying to reach its audience on many platforms, said Wilfried Runde, the head of innovation projects.

Above all, Deutche Welle considers itself a content leader – not just a broadcaster, he said. Of increasing importance is considering how the DW product looks or sounds on various news aggregators and media players – be they iPods, mobile phones or laptop computers.

Stefan Jenzowsky, a Berlin-based marketing consultant formerly of Siemens, and Manfred Moormann, head of broadband entertainment and services at Telekom Austria, represented the telekom industries.

Jenzowsky drew inspiration from both Ron Hammer and the U.S. steel industry.
Mainstream media integrating new media into existing coverages can provide a platform for community, convergence and entertainment – a la Ron Hammer.
Mainstream media outlets need to integrate existing new media technologies into their coverages because integration provides, for any business, an insurance policy for the survival of the company, he said.

“Shares are traded on the assumption of the future performance of that company,” Jenzowsky said after chronicling the manner in which mini mills were able to become successful in the American steel market.

Moormann, who is best known for creating a platform for user-generated content in Engerwitzdorf, Austira, said that to him, innovation is foremost about finding economic applications for inventions. Inventions must have impact – like that of YouTube – if they are to be considered innovation.

Nearly all presenters lamented the lack of a business model mainstream media companies can employ in order to adapt to and be profitable in the innovation ecosystem.
Roland Strauss, a founder of the European Innovation Dialogue, said the image of innovation itself needs a makeover.

“Those who deal with it say innovation is the most important thing for our future – but the citizens don’t care,” he said.

The Mission of the EID – one of many groups trying to create networks of regional-level innovators in the interest of bringing their products or concepts to the EU level – is to be a one-stop shop for innovation – so key to achieving the goals laid out in the Lisbon Strategy of 2000. He spoke with great hope about developments in the works, such as the European Institute of Technology, a European answer to MIT.

Laws governing new media can seem at times about as clear as mud – and the lawyers and lawmakers the proverbial sticks in that mud. Michael Kams, an attorney from Hasche Sigle, and Eric Karstens, an expert in media regulation in the EU, held forth on legal constraints on innovation. Developing laws and policies which can roll with the times won’t be easy, both noted – but it is possible.

Read the full coverage : day 1, day 2, day 3.

Posted on August 08, 2007 by .
Filed under announcements.

EJC-EU project leads to reporting in Lebanon

Maastricht - July 06, 2007

Samira Khiari Kchaw is the first Tunisian journalist to travel to the troubled Palestinian camp and cover the fights between the Lebanese army and the Fatah al-Islam.

Her trip was organised by the European Journalism Centre and is part of the ‘Programme d’appui aux medias tunisiens’, supported by the European Union with the EU Delegation in Tunisia.

In this picture, Samira is standing between Nnaser Naser from the Algerian ATP Press (left) and Ramzi Hayder from AFP (right). The picture was taken in Nahr El Bared, Lebanon.

More information on the Tunisian project at CAPJC website.

Posted on July 06, 2007 by .
Filed under projects.