Armenian and Georgian students will cooperatively cover the council elections in Yerevan scheduled for May 31. In this respect, from May 29 to June 1 students from the Yerevan based Caucasus Institute (CI) and the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA) will now have the ability to utilize the most widely used new internet environments currently employed by the media.
The idea belongs to IREX/CMSPA, which, jointly with IWPR, IFES, GIPA and CI, has designed an opportunity for both the students and to four journalists from Nagorno-Karabagh and other regions of Armenia to provide fact-based and objective coverage of election process.
Their articles will be published on the CaucasusReports.com website, as well as disseminated throughout their personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Yutube and globalvoices.com.
Armenian and Georgian students will cooperatively cover the council elections in Yerevan scheduled for May 31. In this respect, from May 29 to June 1 students from the Yerevan based Caucasus Institute (CI) and the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA) will now have the ability to utilize the most widely used new internet environments currently employed by the media.
The idea belongs to IREX/CMSPA, which, jointly with IWPR, IFES, GIPA and CI, has designed an opportunity for both the students and to four journalists from Nagorno-Karabagh and other regions of Armenia to provide fact-based and objective coverage of election process.
Their articles will be published on the CaucasusReports.com website, as well as disseminated throughout their personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Yutube and globalvoices.com.
“The aim of the project is to use blogging technology to provide real-time coverage of news events in the Caucasus countries, in this case, the Yerevan elections at the end of May”, says a media trainer for IREX/CMSPA Leah Kohlenberg, who will be leading the project. Besides Kohlenberg, the students’ and the journalists’ work will be followed by other experienced media specialists in order to preserve the information objectivity and also to meet the international media standards during news coverage.
To do their assignments the journalists and the students will use the computer center of the IREX Yerevan Office. Kohlenberg was one of the founders of the CaucasusReports.com, where election reports will be published in both Armenian and English languages.
“CaucasusReports was born accidentally, when I was asked to teach GIPA students how to cover opposition protests in April in Georgia. I thought it would be a chance for them to get published. With the lack of good information coming out about the protests, though, the website quickly got a lot of attention and readers. We decided this was a way for both students and journalists to learn more about how web publishing could offer alternative content when other methods were shut down”, says Kohlenberg.
According to her, the idea to use CaucasusReports.com in Yerevan came from Bob Evans, the director of IREX/CMSP-Armenia, who came up to Georgia and worked with the students to help cover the April 9 protests in Tbilisi, Georgia. He was impressed with the instant publishing option and decided to try it out in Armenia “where just a year earlier the Armenian government had shut down all traditional media outlets for 21 days in an illegal publishing ban”, she says. Maia Mikashavidze, Dean of GIPA’s Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management (CSJMM), hopes together with the project organizers they will have chance to continue cooperation in the future as well.
“Besides the fact that it is very interesting, challenging and exciting, it is also very important for our students to practice all they know theoretically. And, this project gives an opportunity to learn more about inner affairs of our neighbor countries, about which we know less than in the case of other countries of the world”, says Mikashavidze.
Ia Gavasheli, a student of GIPA, faculty of CSJMM, who is one of the participants, has many expectations from the trip to Armenia. “It will be a great experience for me as a journalist, especially because this takes place in a foreign country. It will give me more independence which I think is one of the most important things for my profession”.
Gayane Avetisyan studies at Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management and she together with her Georgian and Armenian classmates will participate in the Yerevan council elections related project initiated by IREX/CMSPA.
Source: JNews.am