CALL FOR SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM SYLLABI
UNESCO would like to invite interested individuals and organizations to conceive and produce specialized syllabi in its ongoing quest to encourage the sharing of excellence in journalism education globally. This call is part of the Global Initiative for Excellence in Journalism Education. The initiative conceives of journalism education as a set of critical-thinking skills and practices with potential to raise awareness of contemporary development challenges and the role of the world’s journalism schools in it. It aims to help such schools produce questioning, independent and internationally-informed journalism graduates who, through their journalistic outputs, can disseminate quality knowledge for peace, development and democracy.
In 2013, as part of this initiative, UNESCO published a compendium of new specialized syllabi, responding to the changing context of journalism education and the concomitant need for specialized journalistic literacies (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002211/221199E.pdf). In turn, this publication builds on the well-established Model Curricula for Journalism Education published in 2007 (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001512/151209E.pdf).
In promoting globally shared excellence in teaching, practicing and researching journalism, UNESCO believes that it can provide a publishing platform for journalism educators and trainers, especially from the developing world, who are eager to showcase their pedagogical innovativeness in terms of clarifying, through syllabi conceptualization and production, how contemporary journalism can more effectively respond to the myriad of social, economic, political and technological challenges societies face everywhere.
The contextual background for such new syllabi includes the ongoing negotiations among Member States of the United Nations System to develop new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs could potentially shape the way in which the international community approaches development problems beyond 2015 when the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will give way to a new set of goals, targets and indicators for sustainable development. Therefore, the need for a robust, resilient and developmentally conscious journalism education has never been as important as it is today.
Interested individuals and organizations could thus consider analyzing UNESCO’s Paris Declaration adopted at this year’s World Press Freedom Day celebrations (http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/images/WPFD/2014/wpfd_2014_statement_final.pdf). The declaration calls on the UN Open Working Group on SDGs to fully integrate into the SDGs, the issues of freedom of expression, press freedom, independent media and the right of access to information, as proposed by the UN High Level Panel of Eminent Persons Report, as part of an overall good governance goal. Also instructive in this regard is UNESCO’s report on World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002270/227025e.pdf).
Taken together, these documents could spark the pedagogical imagination necessary to enable interested individuals and organizations to decide how to take on board the emerging development challenges in fashioning specialized syllabi around them.
UNESCO welcomes any response that proposes possible thematic areas in which such syllabi could be developed. Also, we invite interested individuals and organizations to consider developing specialized syllabi on such broad themes as:
Journalism and sustainable development
Managing human relations in the newsroom for effective reporting (e.g. how can reporters persuade editors to consider certain types of stories without risking them being ‘spiked’?)
Journalism and citizenship
Reporting on migration.
Reporting on international law.
If interested, you are welcome to contact Fackson Banda for more details:
f.banda@unesco.org
Blog de Octavio Islas 