Young reporters develop ideas for start-ups - Media Programme Southeast Europe
Event Reports
More and more young journalists in South East Europe want to work independently from big media outlets. The advantage of this option is that freelance media professionals can often report more critically. At the same time, journalistic web content attracts attention and can be profitable if reporters have a good business model. Young professionals often do not possess enough know-how to develop successfully their own online projects. For this reason, the KAS Media Program South East Europe offers seminars on entrepreneurial journalism.
The workshop took place from 20th to 23rd February 2017 in Chișinău, Moldova. Marko Nedeljković from Belgrade University, Miloš Petrović, owner of the online agency MWEB and the web expert Veroljub Zmijanac had organised the innovative training together with KAS Media Program South East Europe for the first time in 2013. A product of this collaboration is the manual "Entrepreneurial Journalism" in English and Serbian languages. This year the seminar took place outside Serbia for the first time. KAS welcomed 16 participants from Bulgaria, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.
At the beginning of the training Christian Spahr, Head of the KAS Media Program South East Europe, emphasised that the work of freelance journalists on the web can contribute to media diversity and thereby to democratic standards in South East Europe. He underlined that online projects can offer an attractive job perspective to young journalists. Especially in an environment where various media outlets are under political pressure, freelance journalism is an option gaining importance. This is one of the reasons for the KAS Media Program South East Europe to educate young people in online journalism.
"Think about a new project as your potential main job," said lead trainer Marko Nedeljković at the opening. He taught the participants how to prepare good web content. Nedeljković revealed the differences to print journalism with various practical examples. He explained what techniques are required in order to design multimedia content for the internet. A special attention was given to the usage of keywords and metadata, which are important factors for search engine rankings of online articles. For the workshop, the trainers have developed a website where participants could do interactive exercises. They analysed an online article in groups and later produced their own texts with multimedia elements.
More in the event report.
