UNESCO Day 2

Hi everybody!

Today was the second day at UNESCO. We started earlier today (10 a.m.). There was a short presentation by Reynald Blion, the Media and Diversity Manager for the Council of Europe. He talked about the "Anti-discrimination teaching package of the Council of Europe." They basically talked about having three objectives to strive for within the Council of Europe -- training media professionals; writing, seeing and hearing diversity in the media,; and disseminating information through the media.

Then, there was a panel discussion about Journalism training in developing countries, which was chaired by Professor Guy Berger from Rhodes University in Grahamstown. The panelists discussed how not only do developing schools have to have an internal strength with cirriculum, programs and equipment, but the have to have positive external relations with practitioners of the field. On top of that, the developing school should have a strong outreach in the public sphere -- otherwise no one will know.

After a brief coffee break, there were reports of European and international projects which was chaired by Associate Professor Charlotte Wien of the University of Southern Denmark. The various reports included global environmental journalism initiative by Anna McKane, City University London, and Inger Munck, head of international department Danish School of Media and Journalism.

Another was an EJTA Project: The rise and fall of the music industry by Wilfriend Vanden Bossche, Katholieke Hogeschool Mechelen. Afterward, there was a presentation on the master's in new media journalism by Frank Hanecke from the Swiss School of Journalism. Peter Linden, a journalist and author from Munich, talked about reporting Europe. Europe in the World was presented by Arie De Jongh from the University of Applied Sciences and Utrecht and Inger Munk, head of international department in the Danish School of Media and Journalism. The final portion of that segment was Micro Europe Radio by Jean Lemairte from IHECS.

Next up was the panel discussion between Jan and Urs Gossweiler from Switzerland. The topic was micro newspapers. This was not originally what we had planned for, but Jan did a great job talking about WVU and the Uncovered West Virginia project.

Europe seems to be a little bit behind as far as multimedia goes. It seems as if they're just now realizing it's important while in America, we are taking steps to prepare students to produce these pieces.The gentleman from Sweden actually brought up the multimedia piece of Bill Clinton speaking at the WVU commencement on the News and Information Services webstie and exlaimed how it was an outstanding piece -- he wants to strive toward producing pieces like that. Also, it was apparent Americans weren't quite as welcome in the European Union meeting, but we made the best of it.

Today is our last day in Paris, and we have to be ready to go at 5:30 a.m., so I'm off to pack and start on my larger reporting project!

Au revoir,
*Candace