It was a Wednesday morning, only four days before the second edition of the EuroMed Academy for Young Journalists (EMAJ), when I got that phone call from my boss assigning me to write a story about the detention of the Swedish Journalist Per Bjorklund at Cairo airport with just a few hours until the deadline.
Before working on the story, I wrote on my Facebook wall the following status “I am writing about the Swedish journalist Bjorklund, can you help find information about him” and I tagged some of my fellow journalists. I received the first comment on my status just one minute after I posted it from one of the Swedish journalists in my network.
Within one hour my inbox was filled with messages from Marina Ferhatovic, a participant of the first edition of EMAJ, while my status got eight comments from Swedish journalists in my network sending me links and contact information of Bjorklund, while in my newsroom we were contacting the airport authorities and the Swedish embassy.
At the end of the day we had every possible piece of available information and from all the sides involved … and this is what I call “power of the network”. This story is a simple example of what networking in EMAJ means.
In EMAJ we work hard to make an old journalistic dream come true by creating a network between journalists from all over the EuroMed region, a network that provides any member another point of view for every story, by having a contact list of sources and fellow journalists in every country.
The network started in 2008 by 18 members who participated in the first edition, this year it included 20 new members and every year it keeps growing. There are no rules forcing all members to cooperate, however their own belief in the importance of belonging to the network is the real force pushing EMAJ forward.
In this kind of relationship between professional journalists certain values as trust, respect, willingness to exchange and real desire to produce high quality journalism is what guides the network.
Additionally, members of EMAJ are completely sure that they have different points of view towards everything – even the way they pronounce the name of their network – but when we all agree that everything could be right and wrong in the same time depending on who you are and from where you come from, the chances of cooperation are at its highest point.
We strongly believe that the EMAJ network is an important part of the future of journalism in our region, a future that may witness drastic changes in the way people around the world deal with and consume media.
Posted in | 29.10.2009
By: Nasry Esmat
