Participant view of ISWiB 2009 - Media workshop

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I learned that the real journalists are heroes of the everydays. To deal with the stress, the boss and the deadline, the disasters of the world is a real service. Besides, I'm waiting for the time when iPhone will be cheaper than now. I wait for the application which I can cut voice on my phone. And wait for the time when it will be well-paid again. I should be a TV star, but before I will start a blog. It said to be a kind of journalism, who knows


By ZSUZSA SZABO
from Szeged, HUNGARY
(Participant of ISWiB 2009)


Young media makers and youngsters, interested in media world, gathered together for warm (temperature and atmosphere) seances in the first part of August, in sunny Belgrade. Familiar situations on the 3rd floor, in the building of a student association, with pleasant light smell of cigarettes, sandwiches, some frappé and - our moderator Jan for dessert.

We - participants were glad, that such a well organized event was done for us, but at the end of the first day everybody realized that the work will be hard, because democracy is the most difficult to achieve. Around 20 people shared their opinions and ideas. The conscious future TV stars can not allow themselves to make a failure final presentation. That's why we had to start working.

It took some days, when we understood why planning is important, then definied our goal and target group. As every exhibitionist potential media maker wants to do some good for the society, we decided according to this nice thought. We should inform the people and exchange ideas. These two are quite far from each other, but we, and especially our moderator Jan tried to make them together, to make everybody happy. I have to say again, democracy is hard.

Find out the content, what do you want to do? (Hmm, what do we want to do? Many times the answer was really human: 'I wanna sleep and where are the sandwiches?'. And of course everybody's dream were a hot coffee and hot shower in the student hostel.) But we were speaking about the content, which is hard to find out, especially when you do not know exactly what is the difference between content, objective and methods.

Our method was to use our favourite Facebook. The creators of this social network could be proud of themselves. Especially their mothers. Our idea was to create a common platform used by youngsters to exchange ideas about drinking games - this one was the bait to the other interesting topics - travelling tips, interesting stories, music of the nations and mysterious places to visit.

To organize all of it was THE management issue, like an action plan, who does what. This checklist (goal, content, methods, and action plan) was very useful for me, because I do it every day when I decide what to cook for lunch or how to organize my evening. Just not consciously.

We learned a lot about the content of our everyday job and our future as a journalist. Actually I can not imagine myself as a sportwoman, running with my iPhone, and collecting the news from the world. I do not want to run. I prefer soft news, and respect the others who collect the hard news for me (then I soften them). I was glad to see a shining example of the sportman, who seemed to be happy and healthy after many years ran on the field of jounalism. Zoran Stanojevic is a real leader, I'm sure that many people don't like him. But more people like, as he has a fan club, and a nice charisma which fits to it. The main message of his presentation was, that after finishing the university I should work in a daily newspapers. After that hard work I could live and work wherever I want, because it will train me and I can became a soldier of the reality, or something like that.

It was also nice to get to know Milorad Ivanović. He is deputy-editor-in-chief of the daily newspapers BLIC. I hope he works less than I think. So he was very sympathic but still I don't understand the idea of Twitter, because 140 characters is very little to tell news. Maybe it is a male job, because the news is longer from the female point of view. We like to chat.

The ambassadors of the new media and marketing visited us on the third day, they can use the new technology, and they are walking in an undiscovered field. Sometimes I feel, the radio speaker or the tv editor had easier life in the seventies. They were calm and balanced. And they were stars, as there were not so many people given the chance to work in the media. Now everybody can be a journalist and there are more and more stress diseases in the world.

B92 is a tv-radio-internet station, still living after many hard moment of war and investigation and BLIC newspaper is very well-planned from marketing point of view. These two visits were charming to me, and I was convinced what they are doing is good. Despite, the picture must be more diverse, there are no goods and bads.

I learned that the real journalists are heroes of the everydays. To deal with the stress, the boss and the deadline, the disasters of the world is a real service. Besides, I'm waiting for the time, when iPhone will be cheaper than now. I wait for the application which I can cut voice on my phone. And wait for the time when it will be well-paid again. I should be a TV star, but before I will start a blog. It said to be a kind of journalism, who knows.


(Published: 20.08.2009.)