Tag: Macedonia

The award ceremony, honouring the work of the 2012 fellows, was held on Friday, November 23.

This year’s winners are Sorana Stanescu, Saska Cvetkovska and Aleksandra Bogdani.

“I will never forget the feeling when I was awarded, it was really special moment for me,” said Majlinda Aliu who won the first place in 2011 for her story about the Balkan war widows.

On Saturday the alumni had an opportunity to see the newly revamped Skopje. They were taken for a guided tour to see dozen new buildings and numerous monuments and sculptures, new bridges as well as hear about the controversies related to the costly project that has now put Macedonia on the tourist map.

The alumni also attended a panel with Roberto Belicanec of the Media Development Centre and Xhabir Deralla from the NGO Civil and a discussion about the current political situation in Macedonia, the deteriorating state of media and freedom of speech as well as the fragile inter- ethnic relations.

“I did not know much about the situation in Macedonia before, but now I am inspired to come back here with the TV crew and make a piece about it,” said Jelena Kulidzan, a journalist and editor from Montenegro, awarded with the second price in 2011
programme.

The same day, the group discussed future alumni activities and models of cooperation, including the joint regional reporting projects.

“It is great seeing all of us together, this network is the biggest asset of the programme and I really enjoy being in touch with the likeminded group of professionals,” said Nenad Radicevic, a fellow from 2007.

The idea to hold annual alumni meetings came about as a result of interest by former fellows to continue to jointly contribute to the goal of promoting excellence in journalism in the Balkans.

The alumni initiative is supported by Erste Stiftung and the Robert Bosch Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

Following the opening dinner on Wednesday night, on Thursday the agenda included a panel on social networking and the media with Filip Stojanovski, program coordinator at the Metamorphosis Foundation for internet and society.

Stojanovski gave the fellows valuable insight as well as practical tips into how journalists can use social networks to promote their work, but also how they can gather information and double check on facts. The fellows exchanged views and examples of journalists’ use of social networks throughout the region.

The second panel on the state of media in Macedonia included Goran Mihajlovski, editor-in-chief of Vest daily, Tamara Causidis, president of the Journalists’ union and Petrit Saracini of the Macedonian Media Institute. The panelists discussed the deteriorating state of the media and of journalistic standards in the country, and other challenges that journalists face.

The panelists and the fellows discussed issues of media freedom, the media’s struggle to survive in the market and alternative ways for the media to survive and resist pressures coming from political or business interests.

On Thursday the fellows had a guided tour in the centre of Skopje and visited all the new building and monuments erected as part of the Skopje 2014 project, a government project to revamp the city.

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, has been running since 2007.  Each year, ten Balkan journalists are competitively chosen to receive funding and professional support to conduct their own research projects.

Selected journalists receive a fellowship of 2,000 euro, a travel allowance of up to 2,000 euro and a chance to participate in a seven-month programme for professional advancement. In addition, the independent Selection Committee awards bursaries of €4,000, €3,000 and €1,000 to the authors of the three winning articles.

This years award ceremony will take place on November 23 in Skopje.

The selected journalists will present their works in front of a board of international editors.

The jury will select the three best articles from the programme this year.

The members of the board this year are:

• Florian Bieber, a professor and director of the Centre for Southeast Studies at the University of Graz
• Gerald Knaus, the president of the European Stability Initiative think tank
• Remzi Lani, the executive director of the Albanian Media Institute
• Milorad Ivanovic, executive editor of the Serbian weekly, Novi
• Markus Spielman, editor of the Swiss newspaper, Neue Zeitung Zuricher
• Adelheid Wölfl, an editor at the Austrian daily, Der Standard

The winners will be announced on the evening of Friday, 23 November, at a ceremony at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Skopje.

A further 30 journalists from the region who are alumni of the Fellowship are also expected to participate in the event.

The theme for this year’s competition was “communities”. Journalists on the programme reported on topics ranging from football fan groups, the environmental movement, radical Islamists, youth unemployment, orphans and the exploitation of immigrant workers within the European Union.

Some articles from this year’s programme have already been published in prestigious local and international outlets. Several more articles are scheduled for re-publication in the local and international press within the next few weeks.

Click here for more information about this year programme.

Launched by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Erste in 2007, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), this annual scholarship provides financial and professional support to journalists, encouraging good reporting in the Balkans region.


“We believe that journalists from south-east Europe should have the chance to be engaged in basic research with an international dimension, beyond their daily duties in their media,” says Robin Gosejohann, Project Manager, Erste Foundation.


“We are pleased to support this programme, along with our partners, for the sixth year in a row, and we will continue with this practice.”

The programme encourages regional networking among journalists and seeks to provide quality reporting on complex reform issues that are of central importance for the region and for the EU.


Ten of this year’s scholars were selected from among more than 120 candidates from nine Balkan countries.

After the completing the programme, they will become part of the Fellowship alumni network of regional journalists.

The competition for next year’s entries will open in early 2013.

The project is organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN and the South Eastern Europe Culture Portal, SEEcult.org. It is funded by the Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans, SCP.

Distinguished experts and individuals involved in all aspects of cultural policy from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia took part in the discussion today, which aimed to pinpoint the main weaknesses of the local cultural scenes and the ways in which regional cooperation could help address these points.

“It is high time for change and improvement,” Zlatko Teodosievski from the Skopje based New Line\Compendium said in his speech at the conference.

The participants shared local experiences concerning media coverage of cultural events, the organisation of cultural institutions, freelance artists, property rights and other subjects.

Nihad Kresevljakovic from the MESS international theatre festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina noted that media across the region pay very little attention to cultural happenings, which are all too often either absent from their coverage or replaced with trivial information about pop stars.

“The most important paper in Bosnia and Herzegovina for years did not have a culture page,” Kresevljakovic said.

Piro Misha the director of Tirana- based Institute of Dialogue and Communication added that the media in his country mainly ignore cultural events and when they report on such happenings the coverage is often biased and incompetent.

Hristina Mikic from Belgrade University stressed the importance of comprehensive and updated laws on culture that are needed in order for change to happen in the stale public culture institutions which, she said, in many ways remain unchanged from the old socialist era.

Other participants included Dea Vidovic (Kulturpunkt, Zagreb), Mladen Bundalo (artist, Tac.ka, Prijedor), Veton Nurkollari (Dokufest, Prizren), Robert Alagjozovski (cultural operator, journalist and art critic, Skopje), Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski (Lokomotiva, Skopje), as well as representatives of other cultural institutions.

The participants also discussed the lack of quality cultural critics, the low quality of the translation of the books that are published in local languages, as well as copyright offences, which occur frequently.

The BICCED project aims to serve as a platform for future cultural cooperation among the countries in the region. It will also be focused on common cultural policy issues which can help the states evolve and develop in this area.

Journalists, media and culture organisations, as well as government representatives, shared their thoughts on how they can contribute to the project through various events such as trainings, researches, publications and open debates.

As part of the project’s aim to boost the visibility of culture in the region, ten journalists will be picked each year to participate in training activities. They will be able to compose articles on culture which will be published in media outlets in their own countries and across the region.
 

At the cocktail at Skopje’s Journalists` Club, BIRN Macedonia director Ana Petruseva presented the book containing investigative journalism stories done by this year’s fellows on the topic of energy. She spoke about the aims of the program and encouraged journalists to apply for next year.

Darko Duridanski, this year’s fellow from Macedonia who examined the energy arising from Kosovo`s independence and its impact on other similar movements in Spain and Georgia talked about his experience with the fellowship program and the topic that he worked on.

About hundred journalists and editors from Macedonia`s main media organisations attended the launch including from the dailies Vest, Dnevnik, Utrinski vesnik, Spic, as well as A1 TV, Kanal 5 TV, Alsat- M TV, Alfa TV along with representatives of embassies and civil society organisations.

Each year the BIRN teamof experienced editors and journalists in cooperation with the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE foundations is offering ten journalists from the Balkans a chance to travel and investigate their stories which are later published in their respective national media as well as published in a BIRN book.