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More Practice Demanded:

Today the problem to properly organize journalistic education at the departments of journalism of higher educational institutions of Armenia is very urgent and deserves special attention. Changes are needed both in organizing the educational process and in more intensive conduct of practical activities. This notion is supported by the students of journalism departments and the veteran journalists of the country.

“First it’s important that the time allocated for hands-on experience in educational process exceeds or at least is equal with the time assigned for theoretical knowledge. The universities have a deficit of textbooks, and the existing ones do not coincide with our reality,” says Ashot Melikyan, Head of the Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Speech. Melikyan has his own formula on organizing the young journalists’ education. According to him journalism and education model in general should be like a chain where each ring is linked with the others.

Today the problem to properly organize journalistic education at the departments of journalism of higher educational institutions of Armenia is very urgent and deserves special attention. Changes are needed both in organizing the educational process and in more intensive conduct of practical activities. This notion is supported by the students of journalism departments and the veteran journalists of the country.

“First it’s important that the time allocated for hands-on experience in educational process exceeds or at least is equal with the time assigned for theoretical knowledge. The universities have a deficit of textbooks, and the existing ones do not coincide with our reality,” says Ashot Melikyan, Head of the Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Speech. Melikyan has his own formula on organizing the young journalists’ education. According to him journalism and education model in general should be like a chain where each ring is linked with the others.

“I am against the common point of view that there is no good journalism in our country, because people don’t understand the importance of journalist’s profession. All depends on the journalist’s professionalism, even how he would be accepted by the society,” says Melikyan. “A good journalist would never be told about that he writes upon order or distorts the facts,” says the expert.

Another problem is the insufficiency of textbooks. Today mainly international literature on journalism dominates in the departments of journalism of higher educational institutions, which is too interesting, but the examples brought in it can’t often serve as precedent for Armenian journalism. There are also a number of educational institutions where the students are taught with textbooks based on the practice of soviet reality with no relation to modern journalism. A significant role has had the Yerevan Press Club in regard to textbooks. It has published a number of manuals prepared by the Armenian authors, as well as has realized the Armenian translation of textbooks and professional books by western authors.

As a result active students who are not satisfied with the knowledge received at universities, parallel to their student responsibilities, try to work for the local media organizations ready to fulfill any assignment given by their first editor. And these organizations take the young journalists and sometimes, after a short time, give them quite difficult tasks to realize. Anush is a third year student of YSU. She has been working for one of the leading media organizations of Armenia for already several months.

“I am pleased with my job. Now I am given very important tasks and to be frank, first I was afraid to implement such tasks, but now, on the contrary, it encourages me and I feel more confident, especially when realizing a difficult job with honor, ” says Anush.

Today there are many students like Anush, but there are also such who are not pleased with the treatment of the media organizations towards the young specialists. Sometimes the editorials take advantage of the journalists’ inexperience and use them as cheap and sometimes even unpaid labor, periodically reminding them that experience is the most important thing to obtain. It turns out that the experience that should be provided at universities is provided by media organizations with a commonly accepted way. A moderate survey conducted among the students showed that most of the students prefer to be engaged in practical activities.

“We spend tremendous time on acquirement of theoretical knowledge, instead we could have had more time for practice,” says a journalism department student Yana Shakhramanyan of one of the educational institutions of Yerevan. “It would be better for the lecturer to guide us in preparing a story rather than to check and make corrections for already prepared ones. Practical classes of Journalism Skills should be spent on article preparation: students should leave the university area, look for a topic and the same day hand the ready article to the lecturer. This would be a hand-on job conducted not once a year, but once a week.”

Whereas it should be accepted also that student must have theoretical knowledge which helps to properly organize his job. The problem is which of them dominates and how much attention is paid to one or the other.

“Of course I highly appreciate theoretical knowledge. Practical journalist should have at least minimum notion on different fields, should know history and literature. On the other hand this knowledge could be obtained also while reading books at home. The university must first of all try to foster a good journalist,” says expert Mesrop Harutyunyan of the Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Speech.

Termina Nersisyan is a student of YSU Journalism Department