13 journalists from Latgale regional media graduated from the second course of basics in investigative journalism run by Baltic investigative centre “Re:Baltica” on Friday.
During September 2016, a group of teachers – Sanita Jemberga, Evita Puriņa and Inga Spriņģe from “Re:Baltica”, Ivan Kolpakov from “Meduza”, Oleg Ignatyev from LTV7, as well as social media experts Krišs Kupruks and Voldemārs Meisters, teached a broad range of subjects starting from media rights and responsibilities, data journalism, visuals, promotion of journalists work in social media, genres of interview etc.
In paralel, under the editorial supervision of Evita Puriņa journalists had to work on their stories about unemployment or education in Latgale.
At the end, the best of them presented the work to the conference of national media editors in Riga. Leaders of the Latvian Journalists Association and Baltic Media Centre of Excellence presented them the possibilities to get involved and benefits from membership.
Journalists from newspaper “Latgales laiks”, “Dautkom” TV, Latvian public broadcaster’s Latgale studio, Latgales TV, news sites “Grani” and “Gorod”, newspaper “Ezerzeme”, as well as producers from “Lietišķā Latgale” and students from Rēzekne Academy of Techonogies took part in the course.
“Our aim was to give the basic training to journalists who in the region most often are without the special education and help them to get involved in the national level media organisations,” said Sanita Jemberga, executive director and editor of Re:Baltica. “When upon the invitation of Nordic Council and SSE Riga we first arrived to teach in Daugavpils last year, we were met with suspicions as after annexation of Crimea Latgale was becoming trendy to talk about, but no one had teached there since 90ties. When Culture Capital Foundation announced the open tender to continue, we applied as relationships and quality cannot be built in a day and then region forgotten.”
The course was financed by Culture Capital Foundation and supported by SSE Riga Media Centre.
Riga, Sep 30, 2016
