One of the criteria for successful applications is that aplicants should be able to present a commitment letter from a media organization about the scheduled publication of the story.  The  Soma Center provides 100.000 – 300.000 HuF(+VAT) for producing the reports, the sum dpending on the complexity, of the article and the time needed for the production.

Topics related to  corruption cases (party and campaign financing, public money and illegal uses of EU grants, etc) and articles requiring crossborder cooperation  will be given preference.

The project—to be implemented in cooperation with Transitions, a Prague-based media development organization, the Center for Independent Journalism in Romania, the Media Development Center in Bulgaria, and MEMO 98 in Slovakia—will focus on remedying anti-Roma stereotyping through the media in the five target countries and internationally.

This project will provide 50 journalists, ten from each target country (half Roma, half from the country’s majority group), with training in using multimedia to report on minority issues. The participants will attend an intensive week-long training workshop conducted by top international trainers. They will then be divided into groups—each comprising one Roma journalist, one majority community journalist, and a trainer—to go on a week-long reporting assignment to cover a story of common interest. The participants will then produce the stories as multimedia packages under the guidance of trainers. The packages and their components will be disseminated widely through the project’s own portal and the websites of the partner organizations, as well as traditional media outlets in the target countries.

Project activities in Hungary:
• Training workshop– 21-25 June, 2010 – Location: Center for Independent Journalism
• Field trips, reporting assignments – 12-17 July, 2010

The training in June will be designed and implemented by
Richard Beckman, the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication at the University of Miami and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile and
Ben de la Cruz, an Emmy Award winning documentary video producer and reporter at The Washington Post.

The course will concentrate on the skills and techniques needed to produce professional quality audio-driven slide shows and video stories, covering equipment and best practices for content gathering and editing. The training will include numerous exercises, both in the classroom and in the field. We will also highlight ethical considerations of the multimedia genre and issues of sensitivity in the practice of covering under-reported peoples and cultures.

In July the program of field trips and production of multimedia stories will be conducted by Richard Beckman and Travis Fox, an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and journalist.

Professional journalists from Hungary with experience of, or strong interest in, reporting minority issues and multimedia are eligible to apply.

To apply, please fill out by 30 April 2010 the application form.

For more information please send a message to CIJ Director Ilona Móricz at ilona.moricz@cij or call 36-1-317-5448.

The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme.

The workshop was moderated by Györgyi Kocsis(HVG), panelists were Tamás Bodoky (Index) and Zoltán Hujder (RTL-Klub).

Györgyi Kocsis Györgyi, Tamás Bodoky

Paul Radu