The establishment of such a network association is one of the required outputs of the BBC PHARE Media Support Project
 
The conference was hosted jointly by the Project and by the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Sofia.
 
Representatives from the following Bulgarian journalism teaching institutions attended the conference:  Sofia University, Plovdiv University, Shumen University, Veliko Tarnovo University, University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Burgas Free University, New Bulgarian University Sofia, Varna Free University, and the American University in Bulgaria.
 
The participants elected an Organising Committee, chaired by Prof Milko Petrov from the Faculty in Sofia; this Committee will have to report back by 15 October and has been given the following tasks:
- to develop the required statutes for the Association;
- to prepare for the necessary legal registration of the Association;
- to work out proposals for how the Association should be funded;
- to detail a list of aims and objectives of the Association;
- to outline a programme for the Association’s future activities (conferences, public debates, etc).
 
Membership of the Association will be open both to the relevant teaching institutions and to individual academic staff at those institutions.
 
Key speakers at the two-day conference included Assoc Prof Dr Teodora Petrova, Vice Dean of the FJMC Sofia; Venelina Gotcheva, Editor-in-Chief of the Sofia daily paper ’24 Hours’; Prof Chris Frost, Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Liverpool and Chairman of the Association for Journalism Education in the UK and Ireland;  Michael Foley, Lecturer in Journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and the Project’s International Key Expert for Curriculum Modernisation;  and Marek Bekerman, BBC WS News.
 
A copy of the Press Release published following the conference is available here.