Entrepreneurial spirit among young Balkan journalists - Media Programme Southeast Europe
Event Reports
More and more journalists in South East Europe are looking for new ways to work as freelancers, not depending on big media companies. Being self-employed as an online journalist is quite an attractive alternative for many. However, lots of freelance journalists experience difficulties to find suitable topics for an online project. Thus, the KAS Media Program offers young journalists from South East Europe workshops in "Entrepreneurial Journalism".
For the third time the workshop took place from 7 to 9 October 2015 in Belgrade. In collaboration with the KAS Media Program South East Europe, the trainers Marko Nedeljković from the University Belgrade, Miloš Petrović from the online agency MWEB and Veroljub Zmijanac from the project GIZ BOSS developed the concept for the innovative training in 2013. As a result the handbook "Entrepreneurial Journalism" was published in English and Serbian language. This year the seminar was internationally organised with 18 young journalists from Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.
Christian Spahr, Head of KAS Media Program South East Europe stressed at the opening of the seminar that the work of online freelance journalists plays an essential role for media diversity and thereby contributes to the consolidation of democracy. He underlined that a great number of media in the region doesn’t automatically coincide with a higher diversity of opinion. For this reason, independent and critical voices are indispensable. In order to achieve this goal the KAS Media Program South East Europe is committed to train young professionals and let them become acquainted with the specifics of online journalism.
Lead trainer Marko Nedeljković outlined the fundaments of online journalism. He explained which techniques are necessary not only for publishing content on the internet, but also how to use different types of multimedia. Nedeljković underlined the importance to provide information of high quality, for example with the help of pictures and videos. Special attention was drawn to the use of keywords and metadata as they are of importance for the visibility of online articles. During practical exercises the participants analysed their own online articles and learned how to optimise them. The solutions ranged from embedded links or external websites to the improvement of the structure and visualization of the texts.
More in the report.
