The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder has been awarded a $190,061 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to train journalists from the West Bank.
The project, "Commitment to Peace through the Fourth Estate," will provide intensive, hands-on journalism skills training for 15 members of the West Bank media in a six-week training course from April 4 to May 13.
"We are honored and excited to be awarded this opportunity," said Paul S. Voakes, dean of the school. "The school has been adopting a more global outlook in recent years, and this grant enables us to reach out to -- as well as learn from -- journalists in a very different part of the world."
Doug Cosper, journalism skills instructor for the school and a former Knight International Press Fellow with extensive training experience in Eastern European and Southeast Asian developing democracies, will serve as program coordinator for the project.
Cosper said the course is designed to reinforce the reporting and writing skills of the print, radio and TV journalists and perhaps give them a few new tools with which to perform their role of nurturing an informed electorate and facilitating the democratic process among Palestinians. The learning will not be one-way, he said.
"These Palestinian journalists will teach us as much as we will teach them," he said. "We will have the opportunity to look at our own media through the eyes of colleagues who work under some very demanding conditions. Journalists who train colleagues from developing areas always emerge from the experience reminded of their solemn responsibility to democracy, and of how often we fall short of that responsibility."
Participants will spend five weeks in Boulder working with CU-Boulder journalism faculty, local print and broadcast journalists and city, county and state officials. The final week of the program will be held in Washington, D.C., where participants will study how the American media covers Palestinian issues and tour national media outlets.
Co-trainers are former Denver Post reporter and editor Michelle P. Fulcher and Nadine Alfa, a Palestinian-American journalist and former reporter for the Lebanese media. Two native Arabic-speaking interpreters will assist in the training sessions.
Trainers and CU faculty members plan to establish mentor relationships with the participants and introduce them to colleagues in Colorado who can coach them in the United States and stay in touch professionally after they have returned to the West Bank to work.
"It is our hope that the relationships the journalists form here will continue long after they have departed," Cosper said. "Our goal is to offer encouragement and professional assistance as they develop in their careers."
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For more information on the CU-Boulder training program contact Cosper at (303) 492-8246 or cosper@indra.com. To learn more about the programs and services offered by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication call (303) 492-5007 or visit the Web site at .