Tag: Hub

This year’s summer school has already attracted the interest of 60 Balkan-based journalism students and our selection committee – comprising Professor Sheila Coronel of Columbia University, Dragana Nikolic Solomon, Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia’s Media Department, and Gordana Igric, BIRN regional director – will select 20 candidates to receive full scholarships.

Trainers at this summer’s school will include some of the world’s leading investigative journalists from the U.S. and Europe, including the Guardian’s Nick Davies, who single-handedly led the phone hacking investigation against the News of The World, Paul Bradshaw, a leading UK-based blogger and journalist, Sheila Coronel, head of Toni Stabile Center of Investigative Journalism at Columbia University and many others. You can access information on all trainers and panellists, as well as the school’s full agenda, via our web page.

BIRN is still calling on mid-career journalists who are seeking to improve their investigative techniques at the Summer School. Applications for those requiring scholarships can be submitted until midnight of July 25th here.

The 2011 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme got under way on Tuesday, as ten journalists from across the region attended an opening seminar in Vienna.

Speakers included Christoph Prantner, head of the foreign desk of Der Standard, the leading Austrian daily newspaper and Igor Stiks, writer, academic and post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Europeanization of Citizenship in the Successor States of the Former Yugoslavia faculty.

This year’s event is being held at the Hub Vienna – a new meeting space in the centre of town that describes itself as “an inspiring place for people with ideas for a better world to work, meet, learn [and] connect”.

“I was impressed with the Hub Vienna venue – it’s a new way of organising seminars that puts people in a different mood because you don’t feel like you are at a seminar. You feel you are not supposed to just listen – it makes you want to participate actively in discussions,” said Jelena Kulidzan, a fellow from Montenegro.

“I was also impressed by Igor Stiks’ address; he was a very good speaker who managed to make a long and detailed presentation on complex citizenship issues accessible and gripping. I also enjoyed Christoph Prantner’s presentation, it is nice to find out how other media function and see everything they need to ensure they reach and maintain high editorial standards.”

World Press Freedom Day

Dollores Benezic, a fellow from Romania, pointed out the first day of the seminar coincided with World Press Freedom Day.

“Today was a very good World Press Freedom Day. I heard about a newspaper [Der Standard] that sounds like THE newspaper for me. These days in Romania, one hears constantly about curbs on media freedoms, publications going bust and controversial media buyouts,” said Benezic.

“So for me, a journalist from Romania, the first day of the seminar was a kind of breath of fresh, optimistic air. The Der Standard presentation was motivating and gave me hope that there is still a free media in the world.

“Igor’s research into citizenship in eastern Europe was also very interesting, as was the story of Erste Foundation’s beginnings,” she said.

Juliana Koleva, a fellow from Bulgaria, said: “Usually I’m a bit stressed on the first day of seminars, today was different and I think we managed to form a good team from the first day. I am also very impressed by other fellows’ topics and background – which is very interesting and useful for me.

“I also felt we were part of the proceedings, and not just passive listeners. I was impressed by Boris Marte from Erste Foundation; his explanation of how they manage to run all these projects across the region without imposing external directives and rules seems particularly helpful for the countries involved.”

The seminar continues until the end of the week, and speakers on Wednesday will include Zenet Mujic, senior adviser to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe representative on media freedom and Eric Karstens, business development director at the European Journalism Centre.

The fellowship has been running for five years and the journalists taking part in this year’s programme are as follows:

Elira Canga from Albania
Ahmed Buric from Bosnia
Juliana Koleva from Bulgaria
Ruzica Matic from Croatia
Selvije Bajrami from Kosovo
Slobodanka Jovanovska from Macedonia
Jelena Kulidzan from Montenegro
Dollores Benezic from Romania
Dejan Anastasijevic from Serbia
Stevan Dojcinovic from Serbia

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

The training will continue tomorrow, while on the last day- March 19, 2011- the conference “Culture in the media” will be held.

The Balkan Culture Watch Strengthening Project, BCWSP, funded by European Cultural Foundation, is a “build-on” project that complements the existing 3-year BICCED programme (funded by the SCP). The project brings together different shareholders (editors, trained journalists and other cultural associates) in order to better connect regional cultural institutions and journalists, highlighting activities and main issues through analysis and disseminating the information on the regional level through local media outlets and internationally via Web sites.

This project aims to involve government officials and policy makers and work to improve the situation in the region by strengthening cultural life and cross-cultural cooperation as an important element of a participatory, open, and dynamic civil society.

The training sessions, will be followed later by on-the-job training from BIRN’s experienced editorial team to help the journalists toproduce articles focusing on cultural policy throughout the region, which will be published in the dedicated culture section of BIRN’s Balkan Insight web site – www.BalkanInsight.com

The two day training programme will focus primarily on developing the journalists’ skill set, and will be led by Ana Petruseva, BIRN Macedonia Director and Gordana Igric, BIRN Regional Network Director who will guide the team through five distinct types of articles, writing style, writing tips, and the use of quotations and sources. Another session will focus on news and analytical writing,helping the journalists to define news analysis, understand the difference between news and news analysis, the composition of news analysis. The session will close with an exercise to test the journalists’ understanding.

Our web director Milos Milosavljevic will host a session looking at Online Journalism and the use of social networks where journalists will have learn the specific skills necessary for writing for the web, methods and techniques to promote their stories and the use of the web for research and collaboration.

The programme will conclude with the commissioning of articles which the journalists will work on in clooaboration  with their local editors in the weeks to come. This training represents the first step in BIRN’s programme to create positive environment for policymakers in-country and within institutions abroad to develop policies that move forward the region’s European transition.

Objective, balanced, and accurate reporting on aspects of cultural policy and other related themes including human resources in culture, transfer of ownership, heritage,the  tourist potential of culture is a key component of that process.

This project aims to involve government officials and decision makers and work to improve the situation in the region by strengthening cultural life and cross-cultural cooperation as an important element of a participatory, open, and dynamic civil society.

The project’s first event will comprise Advisory Board meeting, conference and training “Culture in the Media”, which will be held in Pristina from March 17 to 19 2011. The participants in the conference will include editors, journalists, and experts in culture from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia.

The conference aims to explore the coverage of cultural policy issues by the media, as well as the understanding of cultural policy and the challenges in presenting these issues to the public. Furthermore, the conference will include working sessions which will provide the opportunity for an exchange of opinions between the 15 editors and 15 journalists participating in the gathering, as well as a number of cultural experts. The conference is organised by BIRN and the Centre for Media Activities, CMA, from Macedonia.

Following the conference, the project will continue to provide support to media outlets through the sharing of analyses produced as part of Culture Watch, the collection of feedback from relevant ministries and cultural organisations, and analysis.