Activity Details (ID# 13593)

Activity Synopsis

This workshop was a result of the contacts first made during the delivery of the Newsroom Management workshop at NTU in September 2005, and the recognition by NTU, the EBU, and the Council of Europe of the importance for NTU news of the Ukrainian parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2006.

The objectives were to give specific skills training in election coverage, to identify key issues important to voters, key parties and key personalities; to discuss production methods and managing resources and finally to report on election night.
 

It was a two-day workshop comprising of four modules: preparing for the election, creative election coverage, news graphics for election coverage, and election night coverage. In addition, at their request, the trainer spent considerable time after hours with the key NTU executives, the news chief, the program manager, and the vice president for news discussing to following topics: proposed one hour weekly news program; proper use of studio and team resources to produce a series of talk shows; talent development; strategy for more transparent access to polling station results from Election Commission on election night.
Compared to September situation the two key managers, several editors and several journalists the trainer worked with intensively in the Management workshop in September have now left NTU (that a new NTU president was named in November was cited as the reason). The remaining team brought in by those two managers is now being led by their deputies. This is why only 4 of the 20 people who attended the September workshop were present for the 2nd workshop.

Participants had between 3 months and 10 years experience at NTU. Participants came from a wide range of disciplines at NTU news, including editor/producers, news executives, cameraman, graphic designer, presenters, and journalists.

Attendance for the workshop was a bit erratic: half of the participants did not attend the second afternoon. 4 participants only attended Day I and 4 others, only day II.
 

75% journalists found the workshop completely and 25 % very useful. It completely or mostly met the expectations of 100 % of the participants. What was most valuable was to get new ideas, new perspectives (content and design) and focusing on specific issues. '' It was very interesting to get '' new ideas for graphics, broadcast schedule during the night of elections.'', ''Ideas, which I could use in my everyday work: how to cover regional visits of politicians, design ideas'' ''''new view at the opportunities of the TV election coverage as very specific media.''

The practical hands-on workshop hopefully should help NTU to prepare itself for the elections.
 

Editors, Editors-in-chief & Journalists from National television of Ukraine