J-school announces Czech Republic exchange opportunity for Montana students

By Ty Hampton
J-School Web Reporter

Upon returning from his two-day visit in Prague in early October, Dean Jerry Brown announced that the University of Montana School of Journalism’s first international exchange project is in the works.

"It's been on our list of things we've wanted to accomplish at this institution for a long time," Brown said. "But it's still a work in progress, and all we've done so far is to lay the foundation."

The project titled, "Cross-Cultural Communication: Covering Minorities," will partner the journalism school with the Czech Republic's Charles University in Prague. Five students from UM and five students from Charles University's departments of mass communication and journalism will be selected by application process for the project. The program is tentatively planned to begin in late May 2007.

Brown said criteria for selection is still being decided upon, but application details for interested students will be announced later in the fall semester. Airfare and living expenses will be covered for selected students who will make two three-week exchange trips.

A faculty professor from UM will accompany the students to Prague, and a professor from Charles University will do the same for the Czech students in Missoula. Czech students must speak fluent English before being considered. UM students will not be required to learn a foreign language, according to Brown.

The three-week sessions will include fieldwork for the student's writing projects designed to investigate and write about minorities in another culture. UM students will be paired with Czech students to team up on stories covering each area's minority group. Students will be challenged to compare and contrast public perceptions and news coverage about minorities in their respective countries. UM students will focus on the coverage of the Romany people and compare and contrast that with the coverage of Native Americans.

“The Romany people are a significant minority group in the Czech Rebulic and central Europe. . . . They are known as gypsies, but that’s a term that is not desirable,” said Charlie Hood, co-director of the project.

Hood, a former UM journalism school dean and professor, has worked as an editor for the Prague Post and the International Herald Tribune in Paris. After retiring in 1994 from 26 years of teaching and administrative work at UM, Hood moved with his wife to Prague for work. It was there that Hood started the first English language journalism program in the post-communist Czech Republic at Anglo-American College. Hood has also spent time as a professor in Charles University's journalism program.

The project director at Charles University is Jan Jirak, dean of social sciences there. Jan Krecek will organize the project criteria from the Czech side, and Brown will be his counterpart at UM.

"The Czech students are coming from a background that has only had a system of higher education since 1989," Hood said. "Before then, journalists in their country were just used as tools of the government rhetoric."

UM is nationally recognized for its Native American journalism initiative, and Hood was responsible for the collaboration because of his ties with both schools. Jirak and Hood were the first to make the connection between the Romany people and Native Americans.

"Jan (Jirak) visited the j-school last spring and sat in on a Native American News class," Hood said. "He really enjoyed the interaction between students and the instructor in working on their stories.

"Covering minorities is one of these challenges presented to journalists around the world that we have not yet solved, and of course, there an no easy answers on this."

The project's financing will come from the university money as well as private funds, said Hood.

Brown is also making an effort to raise private money to get the project off the ground. Hood added that UM's Office of International Programs led by professor Mehrdad Kia has been behind the project from the start, and that the university administration has been very supportive of the project.

"It is exciting that this thing is likely to happen both for young journalists at UM and at Charles," Hood said. "We will learn from each other."

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