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Advances in African and Arab science journalism: Capacity building and new newsroom structures through digital peer-to-peer support

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02560054.2014.919945

1942-0773

Jan Lublinski, Inka Reichert, Augustin Denis, Jean-Marc Fleury, Olfa Labassi, Christoph Spurk,

Media Studies and Communication

AbstractJournalists who regularly cover science, health, environment and technology in Africa and the Arab world face a number of difficulties: Lack of elementary resources for journalistic research, and newsroom environments that are not always supportive of specialised reporting. Also a need for capacity to cover science is often bemoaned as well as difficulties in interactions between journalists and scientists. The evaluation of the world's largest support initiative for science journalism in developing countries, the SjCOOP mentoring programme, shows that some of these problems can be mitigated through a variety of support programmes, especially ‘distance mentoring’. The article analyses ways of building capacity and offering general support with the help of ICTs. Organisational structures for specialised reporting in 40 newsrooms are compared. Cases of structural advancement and innovation for science journalism are discussed.Keywords: distance mentoringscience journalismSjCOOP mentoring programme Additional informationNotes on contributorsJan LublinskiJan Lublinski is a journalism trainer and research consultant based in Bonn, Germany. His work focuses on newsrooms, science journalism, and monitoring and evaluation in media development. He works as an associate expert for SjCOOP, a long-term mentoring programme for science journalists. As a reporter he works for German Public Radio and magazines. After submitting this article he became project manager in the new research and development team at DW Akademie, the media development branch of Deutsche Welle. Email: lublinski@aol.com; jan.lublinski@dw.deInka ReichertInka Reichert works as a freelance science journalist and consultant based in Germany and Spain. She publishes in various media outlets like the German national magazine Die Zeit and the public broadcasting station Westdeutscher Rundfunk. In the past she worked in the evaluation team of the World Federation of Science Journalists. Her research interests include newsrooms in Africa, professional networks and journalism quality.Augustin DenisAugustin Denis is a consultant in web technologies and a specialist in building online applications. He worked seven years for the World Federation of Science Journalists as a web specialist in charge of building online tools to help project participants communicate. For SjCOOP he ran numerous training sessions overseas, and was involved in monitoring activities. He is very passionate about travel and Asian cultures, and is struggling to learn Japanese.Jean-Marc FleuryJean-Marc Fleury holds the Bell Globemedia Chair in Science Journalism at Laval University, Québec City. He is a past Executive Director of the World Federation of Science Journalists, based in Gatineau (Québec), Canada. Before that he was Director of Communications at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa (Canada). He worked as a science journalist at Le Soleil newspaper in Québec City and the monthly magazine Québec Science.Olfa LabassiOlfa Labassi was project manager for the World Federation of Science Journalists from 2006 to 2013 in Gatineau, Canada. She now works at Ottawa University as coordinator of a research partnership dedicated to understanding conditions needed for the development of legal systems to manage collaboration between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal legal cultures. Before that, she worked as a finance manager in Tunisia. She holds a Master's degree in project management.Christoph SpurkChristoph Spurk teaches media and development at the Institute of Applied Media Studies at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland. As head of the research unit Media in International Cooperation (MIC) he conducts studies on the influence mass media have on the democratisation process in developing countries, as well as on journalism, conflict and peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. He is mostly interested in advancing methods of evaluation and in measuring results obtained through mass media.