News Title
Between the Lines
Imagine 3 days of highly productive communication with professionals from European countries who not only share their unique experience directly, but also give individual advice on how to improve the quality of materials written for a foreign audience… Have you pictured it? This was exactly the intensive training that invited media professionals received at the three-day “Between the Lines” seminar organized by RE:Cover Ukraine and Die Tageszeitung.
The seminar was held offline in Lviv and its main goals were:
To communicate about journalistic standards and expectations of the target media;
To develop an in-depth understanding of media landscapes in different countries and target groups;
To perform practical exercises to adapt writing styles, research and topic search;
And to build the first real contacts and form a new active network of journalists.
We invited 13 media professionals from Ukraine and 3 experts from leading European countries to achieve our goals. The first day began with a session by German journalist Mathias Brüggmann, who introduced the German media landscape to the participants, followed by a session by Danish 3F journalist Morten Hansen, who gave the group a picture of the Danish media landscape. Barbara Oertel, Head of Foreign Editorial Department at taz, in turn, provided writing techniques and discussed aspects of cultural sensitivity in a joint session with Morten.
Another special bonus was the panel with invited Ukrainian speakers who already work with foreign media. Kristina Berdynskykh, Yulia Surkova, and Olesya Yaremchuk were happy to share their experience, answer questions from the audience and dispel some common myths about cooperation.
On the second day, the participants went on to work on their own materials, discussing pressing topics and receiving useful advice and comments from experts. Already on the third day, they had an opportunity to present their works to real employers, and some of them even received publication offers right away.
The seminar ‘s results not only met our expectations, but exceeded and multiplied them. The most valuable assessment for us, of course, was the feedback from the seminar’s “graduates”, who never stopped expressing their gratitude to the event organizers. “It’s so cool to be able to get constructive feedback on the spot and see your material from a different perspective”, said a journalist from a leading Ukrainian media organization. “For me, the most useful thing was discussing topics of concern to the Western audience with experts from the very center of this environment”, commented a freelance journalist. Someone frankly said, “Contacts! This is what I will take with me with the greatest gratitude from this meeting.”
For each participant they got what they came for and in addition were filled with inspiration and motivation for the coming months! The group continues to stay in touch and work to raise the level of free journalism in their country and to make the whole world listen and not ignore the events taking place in Ukraine.