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CONSORTIUM
Partner Organisations
BBC World Service Trust
The BBC World Service Trust was created to harness the reputation, resources and expertise of the BBC for wider development goals. Registered as an NGO, the Trust operates in a wide range of geographical areas, with a focus on Africa, South East Asia and Eastern Europe. It currently employs more than 500 project staff in 12 countries in these regions and has worked in 23 countries worldwide since its inception. The Trust’s work has been funded by international donors such as the Department for International Development, the European Commission, the Soros Foundation, the Dutch Foreign Ministry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The Trust’s experience of managing journalism training projects is unique in the development community. Over the past six years, it has been involved in establishing and running sustainable training centres in Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia and Serbia. These schools continue to train hundreds of broadcast professionals in a range of technical and ethical skills through on-site workshops, peripatetic seminars and distance learning courses. Graduates include journalists and managers from state and private broadcasters, predominantly with a regional profile.
The Trust has also run long-term training initiatives in Somalia, Rwanda and Afghanistan. These projects have been aimed at rebuilding media industries shattered by armed conflict and focused on basic skills training as well as consultation on media regulation and best practice. The Trust was recently awarded £6 million by the Department for International Development to establish a broadcasting network across southern Iraq.
Media Development Center
The Media Development Center in Sofia was established in 1998 to foster the development of independent media in Bulgaria. The Center provides professional training for journalists and media managers, publishes training manuals and works to forge links between media organisations in Bulgaria and abroad. International partners include Deutsche Welle TV and Radio Training Centres, Radio Netherlands Training Centre, The Guardian Foundation, BBC World Service Trust, Press Now and the Open Society Institute. The Center is also a member of the South East European Network for Professionalisation of the Media (SEENPM), which brings together 17 similar institutes from across the region. The executive manager of MDC, Ognian Zlatev, was President of SEENPM from March 2002 to March 2004.
Specialised programmes at the Center include English-language Training for journalists as well as investigative, political, economic and EU reporting, media management and online journalism. MDC has organised four competitions for journalists: three aimed at the development of investigative journalism, and one on gender issues.
International Federation of Journalists
First established in 1926, the International Federation of Journalists is the world’s largest organisation of journalists and currently represents around 500,000 members in more than 100 countries. The IFJ promotes international action to defend press freedom and social justice through strong, free and independent trade unions.
The IFJ supports media professionals and their unions whenever they are fighting for their industrial and professional rights and has established an International Safety Fund to provide humanitarian aid for journalists in need. The federation has extensive experience of media self-regulation initiatives. Through its “Media for Democracy in South-Eastern Europe” project, IFJ established the Bulgarian Media Observatory which worked to promote ethical standards through the creation of a national self-regulatory structure in cooperation with journalists’ unions, editors, publishers and civil society representatives.
Human Dynamics
Human Dynamics works with both private and public sector clients to provide a range of project management services in diverse industry sectors. With a branch office in Sofia, the Austrian firm has considerable experience in institution building and development, human resource development, specialised training, assessment of impact of policy changes and IT-based information systems.
Human Dynamics’ work in the field of human resource development has included a two-year Phare project in Romania aimed at training government officials in EU issues and a one-year EAR initiative to introduce Vocational Education systems in Montenegro. Human Dynamics was invited to join the BBC consortium because of its solid track record in managing HR-related projects in comparable environments.
University of Leipzig
With more than 25,000 students, 14 faculties and 190 courses, the University of Leipzig is Saxony’s second largest university and once offered the only journalism programme in East Germany. Following German reunification, it took a leading role in reforming the socialist higher education curriculum, particularly in the media field. The Leipzig journalism programme was modernised with support from the University of Ohio and nearly 100 faculty members and students travelled to the United States to study, lecture and consult.
Other universities in Western Europe have tapped into this expertise. This year, the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna implemented a studies programme entitled “Journalism, Content and Media” which was devised in partnership with the University of Leipzig. Marcel Machill, professor of journalism at Leipzig, has also been invited by the Bertelsmann Foundation to evaluate journalism programmes submitted by a range of universities across Germany. Clearly Leipzig’s experience of modernising the socialist curriculum will be highly relevant in the Bulgarian context.
Dublin Institute of Technology
DIT currently offers a four-year honours degree programme aimed at students who hope to pursue journalism as a career and who wish to have the added benefit of being able to work through a second language. The programme combines theoretical education with transferable skills relevant to employment in journalism and related fields. The journalism practice stream occupies one day a week and allows the class to simulate a working day in a professional journalism environment. In addition, the critical studies component of the course gives a critical framework to journalism in its wider social and historical context. Language options include French, Irish and German.
DIT’s reputation for providing a relevant, skills-based course which addresses the needs of the modern media industry has led to invitations from overseas institutions to design similar programmes. In 2001, DIT created a three-year BA course in journalism for the Institute for Integrated Learning in Management in Delhi. The programme provides professional and multi-skilled training in print, broadcast and on-line journalism in both English and Hindi.
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