During the week of 23rd to 27th of March of 2015, 15 students and 13 teachers from Romania, France, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Spain got together in Barcelona to exchange knowledge and produce integrated journalism. The news pieces included different elements, such as video combined with text and graphics, and this pushed every group to organize the work to make the most of the skills inside the group and benefit the quality of the final product. “It’s a good way to work, I think it is going to be the next thing around every newsroom”, says Peter Dalsgaard Thomsen, student at the Danish school of media and journalism.
In the Pilot Week, students with different backgrounds, qualifications and interests worked together doing journalism from a European perspective. Besides publishing articles with integrated journalism on the so-called Euromain platform, the students made a radio show about the future of Europe. “It was an interesting experience, as it was very intense in the sense that it was necessary to take control of so many things. For example we had to set up a phone connection during the show and manage to report about breaking news. At the end the results were positive and we had a 40 minute talk show about the attachment people have to the European Union”, says Georgina Garriga, editor of the radio show.
The stories published on the website treated different topics, for example the youth unemployment in the European Union, smart cities and Erasmus students.
This time was also an opportunity to test the new digital platform for journalism, Euromain. The purpose with the platform is to help students and teachers around Europe to improve the journalistic education. Hopefully the week can give the universities a wider perspective on digital journalism for the future and the Euromain platform might assist them in collaborating with each other.
“The pilot week is a good experience for teachers and students and has been a practical experience of both defining your style as a journalist in comparison with others. Also the team work has expanded and integrated with technology”, says Annelie Ekelin, lecturer at the Linnaeus University.
At the end, it has been quite an intensive week where integration either cultural or journalistic exchanges had taken the leading role.
Maria Gabriela Medina and Pontus Persson