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
Showing posts with label unesco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unesco. Show all posts
Saturday, May 22
Friday, May 21
UNESCO Day 1
Bonjour, again,
Today was the first day of the UNESCO Conference (EJTA - The Future of Journalism Education). Once we finally made it to the conference, we were able to watch two presentations.
They started off with an introduction, where they talked about the changing state of journalism. One major topic seems to be citizen journalism and whether or not they are considered journalists. According to a majority of the audience, bloggers are not journalists. They also suggested defining a journalist as a professional so that they are respected in a different way than a blogger and held to different standards.
The first speaker was George Brock, from the University city of London. He noted three key observations in the field of journalism today: 1. Perspective. Journalism is constantly facing changes, and the state we are in is yet another. 2. Disruptions are disasters for some people and opportunity for others. He said to never let a good crisis go to waste. 3. Crisis returns people to their first principles -- he said this is a good time to ask what we're doing and why we're doing it. He also gave a list of four functions: Sense-making, verification, eyewitness and investigative journalism that are key parts of journalism today.
The second presentation was by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, and they talked about the competencies within the field of journalism. There are 10 competencies with 5 qualifications each, which equals 50 qualifications total. They had editors-in-chief from various areas in Europe and other journalism professionals rank the qualifications they felt were most important -- some personality traits and others relating to work ethics. Some of the higher ranked ones were: being reliable, being able to work under time pressure, knowing current events, being able to determine the relevance of a subject for a specific audience, being able to discover newsworthy issues on the basis of in-depth researching, being aware of the impact of your information on the public, being able to adjust to unforeseen situations, having a clear idea of the required quality of journalistic products and having the ability to balance stories.
Both of these presentations were interesting, and I'm excited to see tomorrow's group of presentations. However, I am nervous for our presentation (we are going last) considering the group we are presenting to. We have already had a couple comments as to why America is at a European Union conference, and when one "gentleman" asked where we were from today, when he heard our response, he raised his eyebrows in disapproval. Seems to be a good mixture between people who are pleasant and people who have a hatred for Americans. Maybe our presentation will help clear up any misunderstandings? I hope so.
Tomorrow is our last day, and our most important! Wish us luck on this presentation!
*Candace
Today was the first day of the UNESCO Conference (EJTA - The Future of Journalism Education). Once we finally made it to the conference, we were able to watch two presentations.
They started off with an introduction, where they talked about the changing state of journalism. One major topic seems to be citizen journalism and whether or not they are considered journalists. According to a majority of the audience, bloggers are not journalists. They also suggested defining a journalist as a professional so that they are respected in a different way than a blogger and held to different standards.
The first speaker was George Brock, from the University city of London. He noted three key observations in the field of journalism today: 1. Perspective. Journalism is constantly facing changes, and the state we are in is yet another. 2. Disruptions are disasters for some people and opportunity for others. He said to never let a good crisis go to waste. 3. Crisis returns people to their first principles -- he said this is a good time to ask what we're doing and why we're doing it. He also gave a list of four functions: Sense-making, verification, eyewitness and investigative journalism that are key parts of journalism today.
The second presentation was by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, and they talked about the competencies within the field of journalism. There are 10 competencies with 5 qualifications each, which equals 50 qualifications total. They had editors-in-chief from various areas in Europe and other journalism professionals rank the qualifications they felt were most important -- some personality traits and others relating to work ethics. Some of the higher ranked ones were: being reliable, being able to work under time pressure, knowing current events, being able to determine the relevance of a subject for a specific audience, being able to discover newsworthy issues on the basis of in-depth researching, being aware of the impact of your information on the public, being able to adjust to unforeseen situations, having a clear idea of the required quality of journalistic products and having the ability to balance stories.
Both of these presentations were interesting, and I'm excited to see tomorrow's group of presentations. However, I am nervous for our presentation (we are going last) considering the group we are presenting to. We have already had a couple comments as to why America is at a European Union conference, and when one "gentleman" asked where we were from today, when he heard our response, he raised his eyebrows in disapproval. Seems to be a good mixture between people who are pleasant and people who have a hatred for Americans. Maybe our presentation will help clear up any misunderstandings? I hope so.
Tomorrow is our last day, and our most important! Wish us luck on this presentation!
*Candace
Thursday, May 20
J'aime Paris
Hi everyone!
Today was our free day, where we were going to see all the monuments and sights. Unfortunately, Jan has been feeling ill, and today got the best of her. We luckily were able to tour the Eiffel Tower today (I absolutely loved it!), but after lunch, we headed back to the hotel. That's where we remained for the rest of the day. Hopefully she'll feel better tomorrow so we can accomplish more!
Coincidentally, CNN is the only English channel we get in the hotel, so I've been keeping up on what's going onin the US and the rest of the world. A big topic is, of course, the BP oil spill. Another story that is interesting right now is the paintings stolen from the Paris museum. Some people are valuing them at 116 million, and some value them at as much as 600 million!
In other non-journalism related news, for lunch, I tried escargot at lunch. I do not recommend it. Since Jan wasn't feeling well enough for dinner, I opted for some snacks instead of eating dinner alone, so I'm ready for breakfast!
Tomorrow is the first day of the UNESCO conference, so I'm not sure what to expect. All I know is that I should dress well. Hopefully the French are impressed with us becuase so far, we've had mixed experiences.
Au revoir
*Candace
Today was our free day, where we were going to see all the monuments and sights. Unfortunately, Jan has been feeling ill, and today got the best of her. We luckily were able to tour the Eiffel Tower today (I absolutely loved it!), but after lunch, we headed back to the hotel. That's where we remained for the rest of the day. Hopefully she'll feel better tomorrow so we can accomplish more!
Coincidentally, CNN is the only English channel we get in the hotel, so I've been keeping up on what's going onin the US and the rest of the world. A big topic is, of course, the BP oil spill. Another story that is interesting right now is the paintings stolen from the Paris museum. Some people are valuing them at 116 million, and some value them at as much as 600 million!
In other non-journalism related news, for lunch, I tried escargot at lunch. I do not recommend it. Since Jan wasn't feeling well enough for dinner, I opted for some snacks instead of eating dinner alone, so I'm ready for breakfast!
Tomorrow is the first day of the UNESCO conference, so I'm not sure what to expect. All I know is that I should dress well. Hopefully the French are impressed with us becuase so far, we've had mixed experiences.
Au revoir
*Candace
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)