Salam Al Akohm.
Greetings from Cairo, Egypt
I was invited by the organizers of a newly formed USAID media development program to conduct a week of training in newspaper editing, design, online video and digital multimedia for Egyptian journalists in this developing nation.
In the orientation meeting this morning (The work week here is Sunday -Thurs) I met with Tarek Atia - the training coordinator and took these notes as we discussed the goals of this program.
MDP is an Egyptian-staffed office led by a German national with 20 years experience with Reuters.
What they do is provide resources for media to improve their operations in the areas of journalism and develop business models to create more advanced and relevant media.
What they are focused on:
1) Providing market research about media usage. (They are just now getting the results of the first independent market research study in the region)
2) Provide guidance and training for improving reporting and editing. (that’s how I got here)
3) Help media groups away from state-subsidized and institutional approaches to develop more innovative media and informed citizens.
4) Foster an enabling environment that would allow for the growth of an independent and civil society.
(Their staff legal counsel offers legal help and promotes press freedoms)
So that’s it - I will be meeting with different media groups throughout the week - and my head is spinning constanty! I met with the multimedia team at the Middle East News Agency (MENA) today and shared podcasting and videopodcasting experiences. Multimedia technology for this group currently means a staff that handles attaching photos to their wire reports - so my time with them was very well received. We actually made a podcast and video report on site with them. It was so much fun to see their enthusiasm to develop more advanced visual storytelling techniques.
