Tanzanian Reporters to Visit UMaine in Pilot Journalism Exchange Program
Contact: Shannon Martin, (207) 581-1281; George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO, Maine — Journalists in emerging democracies can learn from modern reporting techniques practiced in more established democratic countries, and Western journalists often can learn lessons from developing countries.
That’s the hope for a team of UMaine journalism faculty members participating this summer in a unique journalism exchange and certificate program with Tanzania.
From mid-June through August, a group six Tanzanian journalists will visit UMaine and several media organizations throughout Maine and the East Coast to see how American journalists cover the news, from small towns to large metropolitan markets. The project is possible through a $183,000 grant from USAID (United States Agency for International Development) to the UMaine School of Policy and International Affairs (SPIA), the university’s Communication and Journalism Department and the Office of International Programs on campus.
USAID is an independent agency created by Congress to function under the U.S. State Department providing economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of foreign policy goals of the United States.
Because of cultural, technological, political and other differences between counties like the United States and African nations, journalists have developed different methods of covering news in somewhat different environments, says Shannon Martin, chair of UMaine’s Communication and Journalism Department and primary investigator for the grant’s exchange project.
“This isn’t so much ‘we’re going in there to teach the Tanzanians,'” says Martin, a journalism scholar whose experiences include working with journalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina. “We’re going in to exchange ideas. And I think we’re really not worlds ahead of the Tanzanians.”
The Tanzanian journalists, however, likely will benefit from their exposure to new methods of fact-finding, emerging information technologies and sophisticated interviewing techniques they’ll learn about here. But the UMaine faculty and American journalists the Africans will meet during the summer can learn about how Tanzanians have overcome some of the reporting challenges they face at home.
“The Tanzanian population relies much more on radio news mass media than many American media markets,” Martin says. “One thing I’m hoping to learn from the Tanzania media is how they prepare their media broadcasts to reach rural markets.”
Much like journalists in Maine, reporters in Africa tend to work in more rural settings rather than major urban centers, Martin says. And increasingly, local reporting in places like Tanzania, Sudan and Kenya is taking on more global significance.
“I think that’s the direction journalism is going,” she says. “We need to be a little more cognizant of the importance of local journalists. We need to be more interested and more educated about reporting in tight-knit communities.
“I hope we’ll stop thinking of parts of the world like Africa as being unreachable, unknowable,” she adds.
Martin and SPIA Director John Mahon will visit Tanzania in March to work with USAID staff selecting the six journalists for the “Certificate in Journalism Training for International Scholars” program. The journalists will spend about a month on the Orono campus, working with faculty members and meeting UMaine student journalists, before visiting local newsrooms in Maine. They also will visit the New Jersey newspaper where Martin once worked, and will make field trips to the United Nations, the Capitol and the Tanzania Embassy in Washington before returning home.
Martin anticipates the journalist exchange program will continue in the future with other counties. She and Mahon already are exploring another kind of exchange program with Cairo, Egypt, which currently has an “excellent” journalism program, she says.
The USAID grant is significant for the University of Maine. In addition to extending the university’s reach and exploration of student exchange experiences throughout the world, this marks the first time UMaine has received a USAID grant, say Martin, who worked in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2002-2003.
Mahon credits Martin for providing the “intellectual horsepower” underlying the program and Mike Hastings, director of Research and Sponsored Programs and a former development project administrator in Africa, for contributing technical expertise for the grant application and project management.
“I firmly believe that this program model can be used repeatedly throughout Africa and other developing nations to educate journalists,” Mahon says.
UMaine journalism professor Michael Socolow, who also has worked as an international journalist, will work closely with Martin and others to manage the program.