Здесь текст моей первой заключительной оценки нашего первого курса в Датской школе журналистики – курса под названием «Сбор международных новостей». Читайте, что мне понравилось, а что – не очень.

Here you can find my first evaluation of our first course in the Danish school of Journalism – International News Gathering. What I liked and what I didn’t in this course.

by Alexander Smotrov
aleksmot@yandex.ru



During last two weeks our group under the "coaching eye" of Mogens Cuber, or MC, tried to work together to achieve two main goals: to know what the Global news is, to present our view of Carmi Gillon affair on our own web-site.

Now, after two weeks I can say that this course changed my journalistic approach to any event, or to put it correctly, reminded me that a journalist is more than a reporter. For the whole year I worked as a reporter in the Russian Information Agency RIA "Novosti" and had to put aside all my personal attitude to the events I covered. I think it was the best thing for me from this course.

As for the worst thing during these two weeks, then I remember how I began to read Chapter 6 of the Global News. Usch! It seemed to me so difficult and boring. I wondered if the whole course would be like those pages. But further reading made me change my opinion about the book, and next day, Monday, finally convinced me that everything would be very interesting. And I wasn’t mistaken, I should say.

After a perfect story by my favorite story-teller H.C.Andersen - It's Absolutely True! or Det er ganske vist! – I understood that I would like this course. It was a little bit difficult to write a good interview for the Blue Book, because the standards I got used to didn’t accept here and I didn’t succeed in this kind of work. But when we formed our team – Molly, Bart, Andrius and me (later Masha joined us) – I recognized that altogether we would much more. So did we. As for me, our pyramide was a very visual for understanding the Global news.

Our trip to Copenhagen gave us an opportunity to “touch” the events by our own fingers. We met a lot of people who shared with us the useful information and their views on the Gillon affair. I liked very much our visit to the folketing and meetings with Arne Melchior and Kenneth Haar. As for the demonstration, we could observe it from our own angle, not following any pattern, as, for example, at the meeting with Mr Melchior when he led us in the way he wanted.

Working at the school seemed to me very interesting because it was a kind of online journalism which I haven’t dealt with before.

Mogens is a very good man both as a teacher and as a person. We had a very fruitful discussion on Thursday. I think he should only answer the questions that had been asked, not another one. And he shouldn’t send us to the American embassy instead of the Israeli one.

Maybe for the next year a possibility should be found to make a real html-site, not in manila, which gives not so many opportunities.

And my general mark for the course is 9.

Thank you.