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Training For South Serbia Journalists

26 01 2009   Nis_23-24^th January _ Continuing implementation of the project “Building Public Awareness in Multiethnic Areas”.

BIRN Serbia organised two days training for journalists from media based in Bujanovac and Presevo, South Serbia.

The training took place at Media Centre in Nis. Seven journalists, both Serbs and Albanians, participated in the event.
 
The first day was dedicated to learning from the experience of senior colleagues and prominent journalists - Jovan Dulovic and Branko Cecen.
 
A senior reporter with national weekly Vreme, Jovan Dulovic talked about his extensive journalistic experience as a war and court reporter.
He explained the challenges that journalists face in crisis situations. Dulovic, discussed numerous cases that he has worked on over the course of a long career, explaining how to act in crisis situations, such as in a war zone or when dealing with criminal organisations, as well as how to put together a story from official sources or from court.
The  journalists also had a unique chance to speak with a colleague who was a witness in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague tribunal.
 
“It is always inspiring to talk and learn from a legend” said Baki Rehxepi from TV Spektri, Bujanovac.
 
The second session, led by Branko Cecen, a Belgrade based trainer and journalist,  was dedicated to basics of feature and narrative reporting,  a genre that contains accurate and well-researched information but also holds the interest of the reader. Narrative journalism, as a longer form, is not seen too often in Serbian newspapers, perhaps due to space constraints, but is stylistically most similar to feature writing.
Cecen presented an entire story cycle, from formulating the idea, through fact finding and fact checking processes, to the final editing of the stories and the readers perception.
 
“Now I can say that I understand the meaning of “the story” in journalism” said Ivica Stepanovic from Presevo.
 
The following day, the BIRN team and Aleksandar Vasovic from Reuters bureau in Serbia discussed the analytical approach to stories, going through the structure and principles of news analyses, and the professional and ethical standards that should be respected in that kind of journalism.
 
 After an assessment of current political, security and economic developments in South Serbia, BIRN commissioned articles from the participating journalists. Continued work on the articles with BIRN’s editors will be extension of the theoretical training, and will result in a special package of reports and investigations to be finalised during February and published at www.balkaninsight.com