December Newsletter

Maastricht - December 27, 2009

Out with the old, in with the newsletter… Intentions set for an insightful 2010!

LETTERS

A note from Wilfried Ruetten, our director
We would like to thank all of you who made 2009 a year of abundant, colourful work for the EJC community. We organised and hosted more than 70 briefings for professional reporters and students. From the ground up, we organised two blogging competitions. We staged two international conferences. Over the course of the year, we met more than 1,000 journalists, including 800 from the EU, and more than 100 international journalism students.

We heartily thank all of you who visited and collaborated with us. We hope you find it worthwhile and continue to engage.

Special thanks to our partners and affiliates, as well as to EJC staff in the Maastricht and Brussels offices, for all the great work done in 2009.

Our 2010 diaries are filling up quickly. But we will always have time for a coffee with you at one of our seminars or at our offices. We’re open for input on what went well and what could be improved. You may also reach me via e-mail.

REACHING OUT

EU4Journalists: Now in Croatian and Turkish
We are pleased to announce that the main content of the EU4Journalists website is available in Croatian and Turkish. The site is a useful tool for any journalist seeking accurate, up-to-date background information about the EU and its institutions.  It is now available in 24 languages.

New guidebook: covering development
The EuropeAid project To Act you have to Know, with the People in Need Foundation (Prague), will in January publish the EJC handbook, Reporting Development.

This practical guide, written by the EJC’s Oliver Wates together with Reuters, will be distributed to journalists who report on development issues in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland. It will be available in local languages and English.

For more information, please contact EJC’s Marjan Tillmans.

CASAM: Help shape the future of the Internet
We are looking for professional TV and video journalists, video librarians, documentary makers, video editors and video bloggers in or willing to travel to Berlin, Prague, Lisbon or Hilversum.
Attendees will have the honour of testing a futuristic tool for multimedia annotation. Sessions will last between 45 and 60 minutes. Participants will test the first prototype of CASAM with the project partners. No travel or other costs will be covered. To apply, please e-mail EJC’s Eric Karstens. Please give details about your professional background.

Toward Press Freedom, 2.0
We have joined four other Dutch nonprofit organisations in the Press Freedom 2.0 consortium to help build local professional journalism capacity, raise ethical standards and improve media literacy in developing countries.

The consortium includes World Press Photo, European Partnership for Democracy, People on a Mission and Free Voice. The group has been working in recent months with dozens of local partners in the global south on a substantial grant request to work in that area. E-mail EJC’s Josh LaPorte for more information.

Pacific exchanges
We are most pleased with this year’s successful collaboration with Korean and Japanese press foundations. The year’s end saw the departure of our visiting fellows and a fabulous event celebrating Korean food. More than 200 Brussels-based correspondents attended.

Fellowship exchange programmes with the Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (NSK) and the Korea Press Foundation (KPF) will continue in 2010 to offer European journalists the chance to visit Korea or Japan. In return, Korean and Japanese journalists will live and work in Brussels for three months.

PRIORITISING PROJECT EUROPE

Covering the Lisbon Treaty
  It took eight years to negotiate and ratify: the Lisbon Treaty, which came into force 1 December, lays the foundations for greater EU influence in the new world order. Journalists are invited to apply for our unique series of in-depth briefings on this new treaty. Briefings are co-organised with the European Commission in the coming months. Online applications will be available at www.ejcseminars.eu.

New job in Brussels?
The past year has been a bustling one for Journalists at Your Service (J@YS). But don’t worry: We’ve got plenty of energy to help new correspondents navigate working life in Brussels. In 2009, J@YS held two Newcomers’ Briefings. Reporters were introduced to the European Citizens Consultations with the King Baudouin Foundation and the European Commission. Other J@YS initiatives in 2009 included collaborating on panel discussions with Transparency International, ERA, the German Bar Association and the US Mission. For more on upcoming events, e-mail EJC’s Hélène Massart.

All aboard Press4transport
Since its launch in September, PRESS4TRANSPORT continues to accelerate. The website press4transport.eu went live to showcase survey information about sustainable surface transport projects across the EU. The site is available in seven languages.

After the survey process is complete, PRESS4TRANSPORT will disseminate press releases to a wide range of EU media on behalf of the project.

Exploring the euro area
Between February and June, 2010, the EJC and DG ECFIN will host a series of seminars for financial and economic journalists from Europe. A specific workshop will be held for reporters from countries outside the euro area.  The three-to-four-day briefings will include sessions on the EMU and enlargement of the euro area. Selected journalists will also have the opportunity to visit the ECB in Frankfurt.

Precise dates will be posted at ejcseminars.eu.

Unfinished business: crisis in financial journalism
China and India command the attention of global economic thinkers, yet business journalism in these states remains undeveloped. Who will be the independent watchdogs in these rapidly expanding economies?

An EJC conference book to be published in March will explore this and other questions raised at last month’s Covering the Crisis conference, two days of intense interaction and fruitful debate between leading global players from the world of financial journalism: the FT, The Economist, Bloomberg News, BBC and Columbia Journalism Review.

After you read the impressions of Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck and Cristina Romero, please find more quotes, videos and photos at www.coveringthecrisis.eu.

Keep Th!nking
TH!NK2 bloggers were in Copenhagen from 15 to 20 December to attend the COP15 conference. Adela Trofin (Romania), Federico Pistono (Italy) and Diego Casaes Silva (Brazil) reported from COP15 via their blogs on www.thinkaboutit.eu.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 people attended the world’s largest climate change summit, including 85 world leaders.

We warmly thank the European Commission and Dutch Ministry for Education, Science and Culture for supporting the TH!NK2 project.

PASSPORT TO COLLECTIVE, NETWORKED MEDIA

On the EU’s doorstep
Starting in February, selected European journalists will journey beyond the borders of the EU and visit a number of European Neighbourhood countries. Eight seminars will take them to ENP countries: Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan, then south through Syria, Israel, Tunisia and Morocco. Each of the intensive five-day workshops will centre on a different country through meetings with officials, independent experts and field visits.

Applications open in January 2010 at ejcseminars.eu.

Media literacy for Macedonia
The EJC is thrilled to announce it has been elected to another two-year term on the board of directors for the Macedonian Institute for the Media.  We are presently running a multi-year Matra programme, Media Literacy Education in MK.

Media literacy will be embedded in the core curriculum of all courses held in primary and secondary schools where Albanian, Macedonian or Turkish languages are spoken. This initiative was mentioned on the Dutch embassy website in Macedonia. For more information, e-mail Josh LaPorte.

Toward a new ecosystem at WEF
EJC Director Wilfried Ruetten has again been invited to be a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Journalism, run under the auspices of the World Economic Forum. This group of experts has come up with a substantial paper on the future journalism. It states, “journalism is vital for building societies. It is a systemic part of the social environment. We need to build a new technical, political and financial ecosystem to support it.”

Covering the beautiful game
We recently finished the Sports and Society Workshop series in Africa along with Free Voice and World Press Photos. At the series of practical workshops for African journalists in the run up to the World Cup 2010, journalists were required to write stories about events surrounding and related to the games. Workshops were held in Accra, Ghana; followed by two in Cairo (one for radio, one for print); one in Lagos, Nigeria (radio); and two final workshops (one for radio; one for print, in French) in Ouagdougou, Burkina Faso.

Story outputs will be published or broadcast by participants’ media outlets. Of the 72 journalists who participated in the training, 18 will be selected to cover the World Cup.

MOVING ON

After two years in the Brussels journalistic arena, EJC project manager Rodolfo Perez-Saracibar is leaving our team. We thank him for the excellent work he accomplished during his time with us. We wish him good luck and all the best for his future endeavours.

After three years behind the lens, EJC associate producer Bernd Kapeller is leaving our Maastricht office. We’ll miss his sense of humour and wish him all the best for the future.

UP AND COMING

Journalism 2020
11 January, Brussels
EJC joins the University of Missouri’s Transatlantic Center for a half-day conference at the Residence Palace in Brussels. We’ll discuss the impact of convergence journalism, economic models and international coverage in a globalised world. Wilfried Ruetten will be among the panelists. For more information, please e-mail the conference organisers.

WEB NEWS

** Twitter

—EJC is still larking around as @ejcnet. Follow us!

** iTunes

—Download EJC podcasts, including the EU4Journalists weekly roundup

** Facebook—Join our Facebook community for the inside track on events and developments!

MOST-READ ARTICLES OF 2009

The road to journalism: Why we choose to be journalists

Top journalists give tips on YouTube

Scaring up an audience in the attention economy

European Institute of Technology: KIC(K)starting innovation or networking itself to death?

Media Pluralism Monitor unveiled

Posted on December 27, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Filed under announcements.