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  • Swedish FOJO Institute celebrates its 50th anniversary. Half of that time, it supports Belarusian media sector

    For half of its 50 years of activity, the Swedish Institute for Advanced Training of Journalists has closely cooperated with BAJ. During this time, literally all Belarusian independent editorial teams participated in FOJO’s educational programs.

    Com­plete sev­er­al-week cours­es instead of one-time sem­i­nars

    FOJO works togeth­er with part­ners both in Swe­den and around the world to strength­en and devel­op jour­nal­ism and the media — this way they can con­tribute to the emer­gence of a more demo­c­ra­t­ic and sus­tain­able world.

    At the end of the 20th cen­tu­ry, all eyes were direct­ed at the young East­ern Europe states formed after the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union. In the late 1990s, the then head of FOJO came to Belarus to estab­lish rela­tions with the Belaru­sian mass media.

    From that vis­it, close coop­er­a­tion between FOJO and BAJ began.

    The Swedish Insti­tute for the Advance­ment of Jour­nal­ism offered edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams from day one. The dif­fer­ence from oth­er orga­ni­za­tions was that these were not iso­lat­ed one-time sem­i­nars, but entire cours­es last­ing sev­er­al weeks.

    Par­tic­i­pants from Belarus stayed in Swe­den for a longer time. They were intro­duced to experts, promi­nent jour­nal­ists, and the insti­tute staff, and at the same time, they could vis­it var­i­ous Swedish media and see how Swedish jour­nal­ism works.

    Grad­u­al­ly, in addi­tion to local pro­fes­sion­als, the Swedish orga­niz­ers began to invite experts from oth­er coun­tries to such meet­ings. This con­sis­tent and high-stan­dard 25-year coop­er­a­tion helped raise the lev­el of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ism.

     

    Over two dozen local train­ers

    With the help of FOJO, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists pre­pared a pool of train­ers with­in the coun­try. BAJ iden­ti­fied expe­ri­enced Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and offered them to share their expe­ri­ence with their col­leagues – not just com­pa­tri­ots, but also media work­ers from oth­er post-Sovi­et coun­tries. At the end of the 1990s, BAJ was quite active in estab­lish­ing rela­tions with them.

    The edu­ca­tion of media train­ers last­ed about 3–4 years.

    After­wards, with some two dozen local train­ers in place, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists has had no prob­lems con­duct­ing its train­ings and edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams.

    Being one step ahead of emerg­ing pop­u­lar trends is FOJO’s dis­tinc­tive fea­ture. The Swedish Insti­tute is con­stant­ly mon­i­tor­ing trends, so our edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams were shaped based on cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies.

    Thus, the pro­gram on con­ver­gent media was being imple­ment­ed for sev­en years in the 2000s. The train­ers warned region­al and nation­al media about the advent of web jour­nal­ism. It was to come for­ward draw­ing back print edi­tions, so it was nec­es­sary to rebuild the usu­al work process­es of edi­to­r­i­al teams. The Belaru­sian media own­ers at that time were sure that if pub­lish­ing pays their bills, there was no need to change any­thing.

    As part of the pro­gram on con­ver­gent media, empha­sis was placed on high-lev­el man­agers with an intent to edu­cate them about the web news world and con­vince them that it should be devel­oped. More­over, there was an edu­ca­tion­al pack­age for mid­dle man­agers, so that they could lat­er take care of new depart­ments because one per­son could no longer run the web­site and the print­ed ver­sion of a pub­li­ca­tion and engage in busi­ness man­age­ment at the same time. Media own­ers start­ed train­ing assis­tants to del­e­gate some of the tasks.

    Togeth­er with FOJO, BAJ man­aged to real­ize many of these ideas.

    The pro­gram helped increase the resilience of inde­pen­dent media: in the event of the arrest of an own­er, the mid­dle man­age­ment would prop­er­ly orga­nize the work process, and the media would keep work­ing in an ordi­nary course.

    To a large extent, thanks to the fact that the Belaru­sian media sec­tor final­ly believed in web jour­nal­ism and began to devel­op it, it was able to meet the chal­lenge when the print edi­tions were hit and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to print news­pa­pers was not there any­more. Many inde­pen­dent region­al media have sur­vived as web edi­tions.

     

    Adap­ta­tion to Belaru­sian real­i­ties

    The Swedish Insti­tute orga­nized pho­tog­ra­phy and video cours­es, pro­grams on niche spe­cial­iza­tions, genre jour­nal­ism, and jour­nal­is­tic ethics for Belaru­sians.

    Dur­ing the 25 years of coop­er­a­tion between BAJ and FOJO, all edi­to­r­i­al teams of inde­pen­dent media have been part of these edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams in one way or anoth­er.

    FOJO did not lim­it itself to inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and sought to estab­lish rela­tions with the entire media sec­tor of Belarus, so at least one-third of the state media out­lets attend­ed the Swedish cours­es. Joint groups were arranged, when rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the inde­pen­dent and pub­lic sec­tors went on edu­ca­tion­al trips togeth­er.

    FOJO col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Jour­nal­ism Fac­ul­ty at Belaru­sian State Uni­ver­si­ty, try­ing to make it more open, demo­c­ra­t­ic, and pro­gres­sive. In the ear­ly 2010s, FOJO invit­ed jour­nal­ism teach­ers to Swe­den and orga­nized joint stu­dent-teacher groups.

    Thanks to splen­did part­ner­ship rela­tions, all pro­grams were adapt­ed to Belaru­sian real­i­ties. If BAJ saw that the sched­ule includ­ed train­ers or experts who were far from under­stand­ing the local con­text, it asked part­ners to adjust the pro­gram. Part­ners from FOJO fol­lowed suit and some­times could even change pro­fes­sion­als.

    Long-term coop­er­a­tion has proven to be fruit­ful. It gave a lot both to indi­vid­ual Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists and the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media sec­tor as a whole. To a large extent, today’s resilience of Belaru­sian non-state media, as well as the absence of pan­ic reac­tions that could arise in the sit­u­a­tion in which edi­to­r­i­al teams found them­selves after 2020 should be cred­it­ed to FOJO and BAJ’s coop­er­a­tion with the Insti­tute.

    A quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry has passed, and on the day of FOJO’s anniver­sary, we are hap­py to rec­og­nize that the coop­er­a­tion between BAJ and FOJO con­tin­ues.

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