Short courses fill the bill p.17

By: Robert U. Brown

Short courses for midcareer working journalists are one of the best things happening in U.S. journalism education, Gene Roberts, managing editor of the New York Times, said at the International Press Institute meeting in Seoul.
College journalism courses are important, but once students graduate, newsroom assignments in finance, judicial interpretation, medicine, technology and nuclear energy get more and more complicated. As a result, a journalist's need for greater knowledge and expertise only increases, he said.
Roberts paid tribute to the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies at St. Petersburg, Fla., for helping to meet the needs of working reporters.
Since it offered its first course seven years ago, the Knight Center has drawn 775 journalists from 250 news organizations. The Poynter Institute, with a staff of 40, has offered more than 75 seminars, conferences and other educational programs during the last 12 months.
Roberts, heartily recommending midcareer courses, said that the Poynter Institute's experience suggests such courses would be well received anywhere in the world.
Adlai Amor, director of training at the Center of Foreign Journalists (CFJ), Reston, Va., said CFJ helps global news media attain the highest standards by sharing with them the best of modern journalistic skills. The center has trained 7,000 journalists from 172 countries in 10 years and hopes to reach 500 more this year with 40 programs. CFJ trains teachers, who train journalists, and also provides training in business and production aspects of the industry.
Donald Trelford, a former editor and now a journalism professor at Sheffield University, England, told of his efforts over the years to break down barriers and suspicions between editors and journalism schools.
He is also trying to develop an international master's course ? involving universities in Asia, North America and Great Britain ? designed to expose students to a variety of media cultures on different continents.
The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, under the guidance of Sheila Coronel, executive director, is not a training institute per se, but rather a specialized agency producing investigative reports, which are syndicated. It awards one- to six-month fellowships, including expenses and research support, to freelancers or newspaper reporters. Coronel called the program "a sort of intensive on-the-job training that journalists cannot get from their newspaper or from two-day seminars."
The Pakistan Press Foundation has launched badly needed training programs for journalists, who are in demand by the nation's growing numbers of newspapers and magazines, it was reported.