Home
/
News
/
From King’s to Kiev

From King’s to Kiev

Two master of journalism students from King’s will be heading to Kiev in the Ukraine on 31 August 2012. Their mission? To make short videos and blog the events of the 64th World Newspaper Congress – 19th World Editors Forum that is taking place 2-5 September 2012.

The chance to travel to Kiev was open to all MJ students. To be considered, they had to write to the journalism school and explain what they would do there and how they would benefit. Terra Tailleur and Zaa Nkweta  won the day.

The opportunity arose in May, when Kelly Toughill, director of the King’s School of Journalism, and two journalism students travelled to Paris for the international Data Journalism Awards ceremony at the News World Summit.

While in Paris, Kelly arranged to meet with Larry Killman, director of communications with the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), and Cherilyn Ireton, director of the World Editors Forum. WAN, explains Toughill, is a huge international news organization, truly global in scale, that brings people together online. The World Editors Forum is its offshoot.

“I pitched our master of journalism program to them,” says Toughill, “and explained that it is an important innovation in journalism education. I also asked if there was a way in which they could support our program.”

Impressed by what they heard, particularly the entrepreneurial stream of the MJ program, WAN invited two MJ students to attend the prestigious World News Conference and Global Editors Forum to help to report on its activities and events on social media.

“This is an unusual opportunity for our students to meet the most important people in the industry,” says Toughill. “They will learn about cutting edge trends and innovations and come into contact with the most important journalism network in the world. By working on the videos, they will also get some exceptional pieces for their portfolios.”

Both Terra and Zaa are established journalists. Terra’s background is in online media with the CBC and Zaa worked in television and current affairs in South Africa.  Terra says they will be “worker bees” at the conference, but they also plan to soak up information from a lot of different presentations and panel discussions at the same time.

“This conference is all about change and adapting to change,” she says. “We’ll learn about best practice in social media and improve our media literacy.” As an MJ student in the new ventures stream of the program, she is also interested to speak with representatives from new start-ups who will be exhibiting at the Expo that is part of the conference. For Zaa, one of the main attractions is a panel discussion on what developing countries can teach conventional media.


Page Break